Left to Tell
by CommitmentIssues
Summary: "What should we call her, Cassian?" his father asked him. "Benduday," he cried immediately. "It's my favorite day!" I used to say that rebellions aren't just built on hope, but on those with nothing left to lose. The day Cassian Andor died, I realized I was not one of those people. My name is Benduday Andor, and I have lost everything...
1. Finding Hope

_**Hello readers and fans!**_

 _ **I don't know how well this is going to go over, but after putting my Cassian and Jyn one-shot "The Last of A Thousand Chances" out there, I simply wasn't satisfied. Then, the other day, I sat down intending to read all the amazing fan fiction already out there, when lo and behold, an idea struck me. I ran with it and haven't stopped writing since.**_

 _ **This is not an AU or a fix-it. It stays true to the Rogue One story, but I have added a little spice of my own, a little dashing behind the scenes. Cassian came across to me as a reclusive and untrusting character, and quite by necessity. But what if he had a companion this whole time (besides K)? Someone akin to family? Enter Benduday Andor. Her name is kind of whack, I know, but this chapter will explain it presently.**_

 _ **This story is about our rebel Captain Andor and his adopted little sister...and Jyn Erso...and the Rebellion, of course.**_

 _ **I hope you enjoy! And if you don't, I promise it shouldn't be a long one.**_ **:)**

* * *

Once, before Captain Andor of the Rebel Army, there was Cassian, a boy caught in a war he did not choose. Just a boy.

I forget about him sometimes.

I forget until I take a look in the mirror. The same eyes. The same face and hair. But the innocence is gone. This boy has fought and killed.

This boy has chosen war.

But this boy has saved people, too. This boy has hope.

And it all started with Ben.

* * *

 **23 BBY**

 **BAKURA**

I played alone as a child. I never had any siblings. The open spaces and creeping forests of Bakura were my friends. Good for running and yelling and never being bothered. My father had moved us there before I can remember. He told me later that Fest, my homeworld, was no longer where we belonged. My mother died there.

My father was a hard man. Rough and untrusting. He seldom let me wander farther than the edge of our vegetable farm. But once every Benduday, he let me go as far as I desired. And far I went. I ran and climbed and imagined. I found many hiding places in my wanderings, though I doubt I could fit into any of them now. They sufficed for a three-year-old boy.

It was on one of these particular Bendudays that I was running through the forest and heard the cries.

I found her in the arms of a boy. They were on the ground in an open field nearby. She was wailing incessantly, only an infant. He must have been close to ten. He was so still and silent, like he had fallen asleep. I tried to wake him up, shook him and asked him questions, but his eyes never opened. There was a hole in his back. I searched in the surrounding forest, looking for signs of where they came from. All the while, the baby kept on crying. I lost my voice before she did, yelling myself hoarse, asking if anyone was out there. No one came.

Until someone did.

I heard them before I saw them. A distant droning. To this day, I don't know why I picked the infant up, but something made me. I pried her from the boy's cold arms and ran to my nearest hiding place. It was a hollow tree trunk. They came on speeder bikes. Men in shiny white armor. They flew right past me where I sat in the dark. In my arms, the infant had gone quiet, staring up at me through hazel eyes. Wisps of tawny hair on her head floated with the dust moats in a faint shaft of light. I waited there as the droning stopped. They must have been in the field, but I couldn't see them anymore.

Carefully, I set the baby down in the tree and climbed out. I peeked out from behind the trunk to see them standing in the field around the boy. There were four of them. One of them nudged his foot, but he did not move. Then, another gave him a hard kick. I remember shoving my little fist into my mouth to keep from screaming. I felt a tear burning a trail down my face.

Then she started to cry again. She did not like being left alone. That still stands true today. Four white heads snapped in my direction. I didn't know what else to do. I got back into the tree with her and picked her up. I held her tight, willing her to stop crying. After a moment in my arms, she did, but I was afraid it was too late.

I heard the footsteps, the garbled voices.

"Was it over here?"

"I think by that tree."

More tears came then, hot and silent. I didn't want to be kicked like that boy. I didn't want to be found with a hole in my back.

"This one?"

"Yeah."

The footsteps grew louder and louder. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Then something strange happened. I felt a tiny finger touch my wet cheek. I opened my eyes to see the baby with her arm raised, reaching for my face. She was smiling so big that I could see her toothless gums. The hazel eyes were calm and clear. She couldn't have known it, but she gave me hope in that look. _Everything is going to be alright_ , it seemed to say. I smiled too despite myself, despite the approaching footsteps. Everything was going to be alright. _I will never let you go_.

The silence was broken by the sound of a faraway explosion. Somewhere in the distance, a siren began to wail. The footsteps halted right outside my tree. I could see the side of a white-plated leg, just inches from the opening.

"What is that?"

"I don't—"

A burst of static, and then, " _All units report to the southwest entrance of the mountain. A breach in the mine. Workers have set charges everywhere_."

As the footsteps faded away, I could hear more explosions, followed them all along the horizon. A few moments later and four speeder bikes moaned noisily past my hiding place. I stayed there for a while, where it was safe, watching as smoke began to rise from behind the trees. The siren never stopped wailing. The baby never stopped smiling. After half an hour, I decided to run.

The war reached Bakura that day. It was Benduday.

I was far from home and the journey was long. The baby in my arms grew heavier and heavier. My legs got slower and slower.

"I won't let you go," I kept telling her. "I will never let you go."

It was dark by the time I finally made it back. I can't remember ever being so tired.

In the years I knew my father, he got mad often. Looking back, I realize that was his way of expressing fear. The more afraid he was, the angrier he became.

My father was furious when I returned. He was furious until he saw what I carried.

I told him everything, about the boy and the men in white armor and the explosions. He told me there was nothing to fear, even though there was. But we had other things to worry about now.

My father laid her out on a table (she cried when he took her from my arms). He inspected her for injury, gave her Bantha milk to drink.

I named her myself.

"What should we call her, Cassian?" my father asked me.

"Benduday," I cried immediately. "Benduday is when I can run and play. That way she won't ever forget when she was found." I was three years old, what in hell did I know? Surely nothing about what makes a good name. She has never let me forget this. ("I can't imagine if you had found me on Taungsday, Cassian," she'll say to me. "I don't think I could've lived with that name.")

Despite this, my haphazard choice proved unmistakably fortuitous. Ben is named after Benduday. Benduday is named after Bendu. The fabled and wise entity of the Force on a planet called Atollon, Bendu hangs somewhere between the Dark and Light, refusing to choose a side.

I think my father only allowed me to name her because deep down he hoped she would live up to it.

And live up to it she has. She is a woman of mystery. She lives in a world of grays and blurred lines. Nothing is cut and dry to her. But the universe is full of people who believe that _everything_ is cut and dry, and there often come moments when she has had enough. A mask falls over her face. Smooth and beautiful. I have seen it many times, even when she was a child. When it happens, you can never tell what she's thinking. She is shut off from the world. When the mask is on, no one can take it off, though I have tried and almost succeeded. She rarely jumps at voicing her own thoughts, seldom lets her composure slip. She never elects to choose a side unless she is absolutely certain it is the right one. And when she chooses one, she is committed, irrevocably.

That is how we ended up in the Rebellion. This is our story.

* * *

 ** _Hope you enjoyed the first chapter as told by Cassian Andor! There is action to come, I promise._**

 ** _Just FYI: Benduday is the fifth day of the five-day Galactic Standard week._**

 ** _Additionally, there will be a year reference and location at the beginning (or near to it) of each chapter. "BBY" means "Before Battle of Yavin" in which the Death Star was destroyed as seen in A New Hope. It is also the year in which the Death Star plans were successfully stolen from the Imperial Base on Scarif as seen in Rogue One. Thus, like B.C., all the years previous to this count down to 0 BBY, so when a chapter is set in 23 BBY, you'll know it's 23 years before the events of 0 BBY._**

 ** _Hope to see you next chapter!_**


	2. A Dirty Line of Work

**0 BBY**

 **RING OF KAFRENE**

Cassian Andor stepped off the shuttle and into the stifling sounds and smells of gross overpopulation. This was the central trade point in the Ring of Kafrene. _Nice and crowded_ , he thought, any intelligence officer's first choice for a meet. His informant would be waiting.

"Entering the hub now," he said softly, and lost himself in the confusion of buying and selling and haggling.

He eyed the tops of the buildings as he walked. Easily accessible. Good vantage point.

"Hmmm. Rooftops are pretty high."

He noticed then that he was attracting a few puzzled glances from those in closest proximity to him. Whatever planet one hailed from, talking to oneself was not usually a sign of mental soundness. But Cassian was not in fact talking to himself.

" _Don't even think about it._ "

A familiar voice filled his right ear. The Basic was accented like his own, and exasperated in a way he could never achieve.

"About what?"

" _What you were just thinking of doing_."

Some way or another, she was perpetually aware of his thoughts, particularly those that proved just plain foolish. He huffed into the comlink with all the feigned innocence he could muster.

A pause. " _Let me see, how many times has it been that you nearly miscarried an operation?_ "

"Those were all a long time ago."

She wasn't listening. " _Maybe the time on Raada you ran yourself into a corner with an army of troopers on you tail. Or the time on Blackfel you almost blew yourself to_ pieces, with you own bomb _. Oh, and my personal favorite, the time on Geonosis you nearly got captured by the droid that_ —"

"Alright," he hissed. "Enough." Her silence was fraught with self-satisfaction.

Another pause as he wound his way down the bustling street. " _Turn to your left_."

Cassian turned right.

" _You are a load Bantha fodder is what you are_."

"And you're a Moof-milker," was his immediate response. The bustle of the previous street fell suddenly away and his voice bounced eerily off the hard surfaces. Years earlier, he might have had to fight to keep from laughing. Now, however, he was familiar with her quips and quite adept at controlling his impulses. He contented himself with a smirk. "I know what I'm doing," he muttered through is teeth as he turned another corner, past an old gray Twi'lek jangling a bowl of coins. A few steps later his statement was proved woefully inaccurate. He caught only a glimpse of shiny white at the next intersection before squeezing himself into a nearby doorway, the smile slipping from his face like melted blue butter.

" _You really should have listened to me_."

He was listening now, poking his face just out of the shadow, hearing as the uniform footsteps began to fade up the street.

" _Fulcrum, what is your status?_ " Per her custom, she used the rebel title bestowed upon him ages back like some coveted family heirloom. He had laid it to rest after his recruiting years, only to have her resurrect it on their first mission. It had caught him rather off guard upon hearing it spoken again for the first time in so long.

Cassian opened his mouth to respond when a rustle behind him seized his attention. He turned briefly and peered into the darkness. Nothing.

" _Respond with your status_."

"I'm fine," he whispered. "They didn't see—"

"OY!" Cassian fought the urge to fling himself back out into the street. He twisted around, finding a pair of murderous orange eyes leering at him out of the darkness. The fading steps down the other street halted. He could hear confused and garbled voices, could almost see them glancing around.

" _Fulcrum?"_

"WOT DO YOU THINK YER DOIN'?" Cassian laid a finger on his lips, silently pleading with the pair of eyes. He imagined the troopers pointing to his street, heard the distant steps growing louder. "GET THE BLAZES OU' OF 'ERE!" Something slimy and warm wrapped itself around his abdomen and hurled him back out of the doorway.

He sailed a few feet through the air before crashing into a small fruit cart on the other side of the street and rolling to the ground. He looked up in time to see the door slam shut behind him. The footsteps were rounding the corner at the far end. Hardly bothering to stand all the way up, Cassian slithered back around the way he had come. The old Twi'lek was now on his feet. He caught Cassian by the shoulder, clutching at the front of his jacket.

"Please," he wheezed. "A few coins. Just a couple of credits!" The footsteps were coming fast, no more than a few seconds away.

"I'm sorry," Cassian whispered, and pulled the Twi'lek to him. He turned and shoved the miserable creature out into the street, where he stumbled and fell within full view of the stormtroopers. Cassian heard them shout in surprise, then turned and dashed back to the bustle of the main street, praying fervently he had not hurt the Twi'lek too badly. As it turned out, he was more than alright. The troopers, realizing he was not the cause of commotion, left him in the street unharmed. Later the Twi'lek found a credit chip mysteriously tucked into the folds of his clothes.

Back in the masses, Cassian walked quickly, glancing repeatedly over his shoulder. He kept catching flashes of white in the crowd of bodies. All nearby stormtroopers would be alerted to suspicious activity. This was not how it was supposed to go.

" _Easy, Fulcrum_ ," came the voice soothingly. " _You're attracting attention_." Cassian was never quite sure how she always seemed to know his mental state. He had a theory that she just paid strangely close heed to his rate of respiration.

"Let's just get this done," he breathed. "Tell me where to go."

She led him on a twisting path to a remote alleyway. He thought at least in this labyrinth it would take the troopers a while to find him. When he arrived, his contact was there. He emerged from shadow as Cassian rounded the corner.

"I was about to leave." Flinty eyes. Wounded arm. Sweaty—everything. Tivik.

"I came as fast as I could."

" _Not entirely true_."

"I have to get back on board." The big man glanced to the opening of the alleyway. "Walk with me."

" _Don't let him leave,_ " the voice said in his ear. " _There are stormtroopers everywhere_."

Cassian tried to stall, but Tivik would have none of it. With a word, the bigger man tried to shove past. Cassian moved to block his escape.

"Easy." Tivik was large, but he was also malleable, and Cassian knew exactly which buttons to push. Direct eye contact, square shoulders, maybe a twitch of the hand to the concealed blaster in his jacket. "You have news from Jedha?" He injected earnest into his tone and added, "I came across the galaxy for this."

After a moment, Tivik began to speak, his information spurting out with each hot breath. "An Imperial pilot. One of the cargo drivers on the Jedha run. He _defected_ yesterday."

"So?"

"This pilot, he says he knows what the Jedha mining operation is all about. He's telling people they're making a weapon." Another glance to the alleyway opening. "The kyber crystals," he hissed, trying to remain below a certain decibel despite his distress. " _That's_ what they're for! He's brought a message, says he's got proof."

"What kind of weapon?"

" _They're getting closer_ ," said the voice. " _Just down the street_."

Tivik couldn't hear her, but it was almost like he sensed her words. "Look, I have to go."

"You called me," Cassian reminded him. "You _knew_ this was important."

" _You_ shouldn't've come late," Tivik shot back. His nerves were fraying, Cassian could see it in the beady eyes. But he was not ready to leave it be. He took hold of the man, making sure to squeeze his injured arm.

"What kind of weapon?" he asked again.

"A planet killer," the man gasped after a pause. "That's what he called it." A bead of cold sweat slid down Cassian's spine. He kept himself from shivering.

" _A planet killer?_ " said the voice.

Cassian slowly released Tivik. "A planet killer?" he echoed, matching her despondent tone.

"Someone named Erso sent him, some old friend of Saw's."

Something clicked in Cassian's mind, some distant file he had read long ago. "Galen Erso?"

"Was it? I don't know!"

" _The stormtroopers are closing in on your location_ ," said the voice over Tivik's stammers. " _You need to move_." But Cassian's thoughts were elsewhere, far away from the immediate situation. He could feel the other man growing edgier by the second, knew there wasn't enough time for anything resembling a proper debrief.

"Who else knows this?" It was all he could think to ask.

" _You need to move_ now."

"I have no idea! It's all falling apart. Saw's right. You guys keep talking and stalling and dealing, and we're all on fumes our there! There are spies everywhere…" Tivik trailed off, his eyes once more fixed on the opening to the alleyway.

" _Fulcrum—_ " Cassian turned to see the way out blocked by two troopers, weapons raised. _Shit_.

"What's all this?" The voice was distorted and muffled in static.

" _Fulcrum?_ "

Cassian raised his hands coolly, fixing a hapless smile on his face. "Just me and my friend. If we're bothering someone, we'll get out of the way." The trooper mask stared blankly at him, hard and shiny, entirely depersonalized.

"You're not leaving," it barked. "Come on, let's see some scandocs."

" _Do something. You need to get out_."

"Yeah, of course." His face was smiling, but his mind was racing with possibilities. He selected one. "My gloves?" The stormtroopers showed no indication of opposition. He reached his hand casually into his jacket, his fingers finding the hard grip of his blaster. He didn't give himself time to think. His body acted on reflex, on years of necessary experience. In his profession, being fast meant you got to live a few more days. It was dirty line of work, but he knew nothing else.

A heartbeat later, he was staring down at two still white forms on the filthy concrete. A pulse was racing in his ears.

"No…" Tivik's voice came from behind him. "What have you _done_?"

 _What was necessary_ , he answered in his head. Despite the muffler Cassian had installed on his blaster, the sound of two bodies dropping would be enough for any buckethead to come and investigate.

" _There will be more coming from the same way_." Even as she said it he heard a garbled voice from a few blocks over. "Troopers down," it said. "Section 9."

" _You need to find another way out_."

Cassian glanced all around him. His eyes flew from the three filthy walls that confined them to the opening of the alleyway to the bodies on the ground, and then upwards. A network of rusty pipes. Plenty of handholds. They needed to climb.

He started to pull Tivik in the direction of the nearest wall, but when his intentions became clear, the larger man began to struggle.

"Are you _crazy_?" He pulled himself from Cassian's grip. "I'll never climb out of here. My arm!" His arm. Cassian had forgotten.

" _They're almost there, Fulcrum_." The voice was losing its professional calm.

What do to?

She hesitated and so did he. Cassian couldn't leave Tivik here. It wasn't a matter of conscience; they could not risk an informant falling into Imperial hands. Both knew they were fast running out of options. Both were quickly coming to the same conclusion. The pause dragged on for an eternity.

" _Terminate him_ ," said the voice finally. All emotion had gone from it. " _Just do it and get out_."

Tivik was fast approaching hysteria. Cassian could hear footsteps bouncing off the next street over.

"Move!" they were yelling. "Move!"

" _Do it now_."

Tivik had his back to him, facing the alleyway opening. He didn't turn when Cassian stepped up close. He could hear the desperate gasps of air as they shuddered through the man's body.

"Hey, calm down." He kept his voice low and soothing. He imagined this was quite what it would be like trying to pacify a Nerf before slaughter. "Calm down. You did good. Everything you told me, it's real?"

"It's real."

" _Fulcrum_."

He gripped the blaster tightly, set it against Tivik's back. "We'll be alright," he murmured.

" _Cassi_ —" The blaster went off in his hand. The big man slumped to the ground, leaving the smell of burning flesh hanging in the air. It was humane. It was necessary. Cassian stared down at him for a moment, then turned and began to climb. There was nothing on the other end. No comfort from the voice in his ear.

" _Lieutenant Andor_ ," he heard a much deeper voice say. There was a burst of static as a hand covered the mic. Faintly, he heard the deeper voice rumble something, words indiscernible, then a distant "yes sir".

Another smaller static burst as the hand was removed. " _Fulcrum, you are instructed to return to headquarters_ ," she said. " _The General has urgent business for you. They have a new contact they think will help us find out more about this planet killer_."

Cassian hoisted himself breathlessly up onto the roof. Below, a stream of stormtroopers filled the little alley. He watched them as they tried to make sense what had happened. Tivik would surely be blamed for the murder of the two stormtroopers. _A hero's death_. It was better this way, he tried to assure himself.

"Understood." He turned from the scene and set off across the rooftop, back in the direction of the shuttle bay. "See you soon, Ben."

There was nothing but static on the other end.

* * *

 ** _Sound familiar? Yeah! It's one of the first scenes from Rogue One!_**

 ** _AN: I am using the audio version of the Rogue One novel for the dialogue that pertains to the plot, so there may be some inconsistencies. Also, I apologize in advance for any misuse of galactic jargon. I am doing my best with what the Internet provided me._**


	3. One Man's Scrap Metal

**_Sorry this one took so long! I've been chipping away at other bits of the story ahead of time, trying to explore the relationships I want to communicate early on._**

 ** _AN: I will be referencing one of the missions Ben mentioned in the previous chapter, so I hope you were paying attention!_**

 ** _Anyway, I hope you enjoy!_**

* * *

 **3 BBY**

 **GEONOSIS**

Cassian abhorred disguises. He hated the insinuation, like he couldn't just blend in as himself, like his own identity hung in the balance. Like each time he donned another's skin and then shed it, he would not be the same person.

What he hated most, though, was Imperial disguises, particularly the one he wore now. It had been procured through disreputable means before they had arrived on planet. If anything, he thought it made him more conspicuous. The officer's uniform was so inflexible, he might as well have been wearing a straightjacket. It afforded him nothing resembling a full range of motion, and as he crossed the hangar, he felt as if even his long strides were hindered. The fabric seemed to be airtight as well. Geonosis winds gusted sand and warm air into the hangar, and under all his stiff layers of clothing, Cassian was beginning to sweat. The rough grey material chaffed at his neck.

"Why do Imperials have to put so much damn starch in their collars?" he grumbled, tugging at the abrasive fabric.

" _To keep their inflated heads from rolling off their shoulders_ ," the voice said in his right ear. He grinned, but quickly straightened his face at an odd glance from an Imperial pilot. He nodded as officiously as he could and continued across the hangar. Somewhere behind him, Ben sat concealed—albeit grudgingly—in a _Lambda_ -class T-4a Imperial shuttle. She would mark his progress and provide a quick escape route if necessary, though they hoped to get in and out without setting off any alarms. The comlink channel was secure from this distance, even here in the heart of Imperial territory. They had made sure to triple check that. Ben had thought it was all a bit of overkill, but that was mostly likely due to the fact that she was being left behind.

" _Come on_ ," he heard her mutter as he reached the door. " _We can take them all if we do it together. I can set a diversion elsewhere_ —"

"That's not going to fly."

" _Why not?"_

"Because I _know_." He stopped just inside the door and glanced down the hall before walking on. His words were greeted with an irritated silence. "This isn't just one of our usual blue milk runs," he went on, trying to move his lips as little as possible. "This is central Imperial territory. We need to take all the precautions."

" _What's the point, anyway? What's so important about these files we have to find?_ "

"The General wouldn't say, but it seemed pretty important to him." Cassian stopped as unit of stormtroopers passed by him. "Personally," he continued when they were beyond earshot, "I think he's just paranoid."

" _Takes one to know one_."

"Dirtball."

" _Nerfherder_."

Cassian stifled the smile this time as he turned the corner and started down a different hallway. Behind him, he heard another set of footsteps. He glanced over his shoulder to see a man in a uniform much like his own, eyes latched onto a datapad in his hands. When Cassian turned his head back to the front, he saw second man rounding the corner at the other end of the hall. Blue eyes. Salt-and-pepper hair. Crisp white uniform. His stomach dropped.

No. It was not possible. For just a heartbeat, he was in another place. Dark and wet and cold. His flesh screamed. His bones were melting. His mind was on fire. There was no escape.

What was _he_ doing here? Cassian whispered as much as he ducked into the nearest open doorway.

" _What are you talking ab—No, not in there!_ "

"I know what I'm doing." He caught a fleeting glimpse of scrap metal, piled up all over the place before pressing himself against the wall.

" _That door locks from the outside, Fulcrum._ "

"So I won't let it close," he rasped under his breath. He glanced upwards to a small blinking red light in the corner. No camera, just a sensor. His lifted his gaze further still to see a distant square of sky where the ceiling should have been. A disposal point? The room stank of rust and battery acid. This must be where droids came to die.

" _Why are you even hiding?_ " came the voice. It was oddly short-winded.

 _Because he knows my face_ , Cassian wanted to say. A cold sweat was beginning to leech into his clothes.

" _What was the point of getting you that disguise if you're not even going to use it?_ " She really did sound out of breath.

 _Is she doing push-ups in there?_ Cassian wondered vaguely, but kept his mouth shut.

The two sets of footsteps halted right outside the doorway.

"Lieutenant Commander Krennic." That was the man in grey.

"Sergeant Cohl." The second voice sent shivers up his spine. "You have secured the plans, then?"

"Yes, sir. They have been extracted and sent off-planet. They will be halfway to base by now."

 _Which base?_ Cassian wanted to scream. _Which base?!_

"Excellent." He paused and sniffed. "What is this door doing open? It reeks."

"My apologies, Commander." A few short beeps and the door hissed shut, plunging the room into darkness. The only living inhabitant stood frozen against the wall as the footsteps outside faded away.

After a moment the voice spoke in his ear. " _What the hell was that?_ " Cassian clenched his hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

"Krennic," he whispered to the darkness.

" _…Sweet mother of the Void…_ " the voice exhaled. He didn't dare to say anything. " _The files?_ "

He shook his head, knowing that she could sense it even though she couldn't see it.

A heavy pause. " _We have to abort the mission_."

Cassian allowed himself a humorless smile. "About that…"

" _What?_ " said the voice in his ear.

"You any good at picking locks?"

This pause was much more exasperated. " _You let the door close, didn't you?_ " He could still hear a faint breathlessness in her voice.

" _HEY!_ " the shout filled his ear, causing the comlink to squawk.

"Who was that?" Cassian hissed.

He heard only the crackle of interference on the other end. He tapped the comlink.

" _Ben?_ " he tried again, mentally kicking himself for using her name.

Nothing but static.

His heart began to sink. He started looking frantically around the room for something, _anything_ , that could help him get out. His eyes flitted over a plethora of mechanical arms and legs and heads, before resting on one body that seemed remarkably intact.

It was a KX-series security droid, slumped against one wall. The symbol of the Empire was branded onto each dark grey shoulder in white paint. A control panel on the back gave it a hunched appearance, and antennas jutted up from between the buttons like spiky appendages. The barrel chest was connected to the hips by a slim abdomen. Its long and spindly limbs were slack, resting on the ground at odd angles. With legs like that, Cassian estimated it would stand at about seven feet tall. A few metal vertebrae sufficed as a neck, running from the broad shoulders to the underside of the flat-bottomed jaw. Two light receptors were set into the rounded metal head like some pretense of eyes. They were dark, probably had been for a while. Slouched over like it was, with its head lolled to one side, it looked like a child's toy that had been thrown into a corner and forgotten.

Not knowing what else to do, he stepped over to the droid and started pushing buttons on the control panel. Nothing. He cursed under his breath, mind racing. He couldn't hear it, but somewhere inside that gray skull, the little metal parts began to whir.

Suddenly, he heard the garbled voices of two stromtroopers as they turned down his hallway.

"There. The scrap room. That's where the motion sensor went off."

"Anything in there that could have triggered it?"

"Just parts, mostly. Except for one. Powered it off ages ago. Kept glitching all over the place and mixing up where to put cargo. Do you know, at one point I had to sort five power packs out of a case of five hundred grenades? _Five hundred_."

"Unbelievable."

The door to the room slid open, flooding it with light once again. A stormtrooper stepped in.

"I can't imagine what could have set it off, but—" He was interrupted by a single blaster fire that blew through his back and straight out of his chest. Crouched to one side of the door, Cassian watched him fall facedown.

A burst of static in his ear. _"Not the quickest draw in the galaxy, was he_ ," she said.

"No." Cassian straightened, eyeing the prone form on the ground. "No, he wa—." He froze. "Wait. What happened? How did you know that?" Another burst of static as the comlink shorted out again.

"I watched the whole thing," came a garbled voice behind him. He spun around to see another stormtrooper standing in the doorway. It put its hands up and twitched to one side as he lifted his blaster and fired. The shot glanced off the shoulder, leaving a blackened semicircle in the white armor and a smoking hole in the wall.

"Son of a—" The trooper tore the helmet off.

The girl underneath glared at him with piercing hazel eyes. Tawny hair was plastered to her forehead. Scars laced the left side of her face. Shallow crevices in the skin, like the faint impression of streams flowing over the smooth terrain, long since run dry. One streambed reached the edge of her mouth. One brushed around the corner of her eye, cutting a path through the middle of her left brow. The rest tangled in the hollow of her cheek, winding jaggedly over jaw and down neck. The left ear had suffered as well, the upper cartilaginous curve split nearly in half. She usually kept it hidden.

"Ben," Cassian hissed, glancing into the hallway behind her before pulling her into the room. "What in the blue blazes are you doing here?"

"Saving your ass."

"I told you to stay on the ship—"

"Well I thought it was boring, and you were in trouble. No brainer really."

"By the authority of the Empire," said a calm, tinny voice behind them, "I command you to surrender yourselves now."

In all commotion, they had not noticed the droid come to life and stand up. It loomed against the wall, its light receptors twitching from one face to the other. In the darkness, they emitted twin beams of light. Cassian swallowed hard. His height estimations had certainly been accurate.

Ben's eyes widened. "What did you _do_?"

"What was I _supposed_ to do?" he shot back. "I was stuck in here."

"Surrender yourselves now," the tinny voice repeated.

The towering droid took an arthritic step forward, rust raining from its knee joints. Without hesitation, Ben slipped around behind it and launched herself at its back, still wearing the stormtrooper armor. It turned around, rotating its head to and fro as if wondering where the girl had gone. She began pushing button after button on the panel. It only seemed to make the droid mad. It began to twitch and spin around, trying to shake her off.

"Sod it," Ben said through gritted teeth. She grabbed the metal plate on the back of the cranium and pried it off, reaching a hand immediately inside. The droid's head jerked back reflexively, smacking her squarely across the left temple. The blow almost threw her off, but she held on by the hand that was inserted into the droid's head. After a moment, she redoubled her efforts, wrapping her legs around its narrow hips. The droid spun and twisted, trying desperately to fling off its unwelcome passenger.

Cassian had a hard enough time avoiding being hit by the flailing limbs, metal or not. He had no chance between ducking and rolling and dodging to help the girl as she clung doggedly to the droid's back.

With a yell, Ben finally succeeded in yanking a tangle of wires out place. The back of the droid's metal skull spat sparks into her face as the light faded once again from the two receptors. The knees buckled and the metal frame toppled backward towards the wall, bringing Ben down with it. They hit hard, metal scraping flesh scraping concrete. Despite the clamor of the droid's body, Cassian swore he heard the back of her head as it cracked against the stone.

Ben was on her feet in a heartbeat. She still held the wires in her closed fist, a chaos of blue and red and yellow and pink. A small gray box gathered the opposite ends into a neat and colorful twist of rope. Effectively, the brain, and its nerve endings. They stood there for a moment, panting, listening for any sounds coming down the hall. When nothing happened, they glanced at each other.

"We need to get out of here," Cassian said between breaths. Ben tilted her sweaty head to one side.

"Aw, really? I was just getting comfortable here." She bent over the droid as he rolled his eyes and began fiddling with the back of its head. After a moment, he realized she was _reconnecting_ the wires.

"What the pfassk do you think you're doing?"

"We're taking him with us."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I said we're tak—"

"No."

"Cassian—"

"No!" He pulled her up into a standing position, looking her straight in the eye. "First of all, it's not a _he_ , it's an _it_. Second of all, _it_ is dangerous. Or have you forgotten what happened a moment ago?"

She nudged the head with her foot. It rocked limply to the side with a hollow clank.

"Looks pretty harmless to me."

"Ben—"

"Cassian!" She spun on him suddenly, excitement blazing in her hazel eyes. " _Think_ about it! A reprogrammed Imperial droid? Think of the places we could sneak into! With something like _that_ "—she waved the black box toward the pile of metal on the ground—"no Imperial base is off limits. We would be invisible."

He looked at the lifeless droid. One last spark sputtered from the back of the head. He looked back at Ben. Her cheeks and nose were peppered with spark burn. Redness was quickly spreading. Blood dribbled from the fresh cut on her temple, tracing out the network of crevices on her cheek, like those dried streambeds had been revived in red. Whether from that blow or the crack to the back of the head, she looked dazed in her fervor.

Fearing the worst, Cassian reached up a hand and gently pulled the skin beneath her right eye down to get a good look at her pupil. She immediately flinched and slapped the offending finger away. Not gentle enough. She held a hand up, palm close to her reddened skin, hardly daring to touch it herself.

"Sorry." He dropped his hand. "Ben, reprogramming a droid is difficult, especially when it wants you dead or captured." He watched her move her hand from in front of her face to the back of her head. It came away bloody.

"It won't be a problem." She said with a grimace, then wiped her hand on the white trooper armor and looked at him again, her face a mask. No pain. "What have we ever tried that we couldn't accomplish together?"

Cassian knew there was no use in arguing, not when she had already chosen a side. He flung his arms wide in resignation and then placed his hands on his hips. "Then how do you propose we get it back to the ship?" Perhaps that would dissuade her from carrying out this ludicrous scheme.

She grinned, unperturbed. "I have an idea." She glanced down at the stormtrooper on the floor and then back up at him, still smiling. "Are you ready to do things my way?"

Ten minutes later, a bomb went off somewhere inside the base. Everywhere, sirens began to wail. ( _So much for not setting off any alarms_ , Cassian thought to himself.) All available forces were called inside to secure the area and investigate the damage. A few moments after the blast, two stormtroopers and a K-2SO unit walked out of the base, and into the emptying hangar.

No one paused long enough in their rush to see that one of the troopers was significantly shorter than the other, or that the short one had a smear of red on its white armor and a stream of it coming from beneath its helmet, or that the taller one had a hole punched through his chest, or even that the K-2SO unit lurched slightly to the right every few steps, loose wires poking from the open back of its skull.

"Bucketheads," the shorter one gibed as more troopers jogged past in the other direction.

" _You're_ a buckethead, Ben," said the taller one.

"So are you, White-hat." There was a Delta-class T-3c Imperial shuttle just ahead of them, its hatch already open. They walked quickly toward it, the taller one shooting down the black-armored guards that stood on either side of the boarding platform, the shorter one glancing behind in case of followers. Lieutenant Commander Krennic would later emerge from the base and wonder who had killed his guards and taken his shuttle.

"The-the base is under atta—under attack," said the droid, the words halting and inflected in all the wrong places. "All units must report—units must report to the left quadrant-ant-ant-ant and await ord—await orders." Once Ben had more or less plugged his brain back in, he had been cognizant enough to recognize the stormtrooper masks they wore. He followed commands like a well-trained dog.

"Those orders aren't for us," said Ben as she guided him up the walkway and onto the ship. "C'mon, you rusty bag of bolts." She sat him down on the floor as Cassian removed his helmet, stepped into the cockpit, and started powering up the shuttle. Ben closed the hatch and pulled off her own helmet. "Suffering Siths," she swore. "We're gonna have to program some of this obedience out of you." The shuttle began to lift from the ground as she bent over the droid's open skull.

"The Emp-Empire—the Empire will exterminate all—exterminate all efforts at ins-ins-ins-insurrection."

"Same goes for you, Glitch-head. You're one of us now." She pulled the black box out of the metal cranium once more and the light in his receptors began to fade.

"Welcome to the Rebellion."

* * *

 ** _I wondered when I saw the movie where exactly Cassian found K-2SO and how he managed to bring him back. I thought perhaps there was a story somewhere in there waiting to be written. So, here it is! I intentionally will be putting some of K-2 into my character, Ben, since she has a hand in reprogramming him. His mouthiness has to come from somewhere, so maybe he just hears the things she says and parrots them back._**

 ** _Also, despite the fact that they reprogrammed Kay, I like to think there was rebellion deep down in his circuits all along. Something that caused him to malfunction and be decommissioned in the first place. In a way, I wanted to show with this chapter how the Empire views its armies and forces, whether living or not. They are not treated as individuals. There is a depersonalization there between the masters at the top and all the subordinates scurrying around beneath. They may as well have been talking about Bodhi Rook when they said he "malfunctioned." Indeed, they use the term "defected" to describe the pilot's betrayal._**

 ** _PS: This is a precursor to the Scarif mission we see in Rogue One. Ben and Cassian just don't know it yet._**

 ** _PSS: I will be using name-calling quite frequently, if you haven't already guessed. This is my disclaimer: I own none of those names. They belong to the Star Wars franchise, courtesy of Wookieepedia._**


	4. Rebels of a Feather

Cassian and I always used to share everything with one another. He keeps much of himself hidden from the rest of the world, but when two people are as close as we are, it becomes a necessity. A survival tactic. Ever since we were little, we learned to lean on one another. Because burdens are easier to bear if you let someone carry them with you. How else could we have made it this far? Cassian and I always used to share everything with one another.

But these days, we don't.

Because the older we got, the heavier and more gruesome the burdens became, and the more Cassian began to keep from me.

There are two things that I know of:

Firstly, he will not open up about the lives he has taken. Few people know, but Cassian is no lion-heart. At his very core, he is a gentle soul. I can see it sometimes in those dark eyes, but that too he often hides from the world. His calloused nature is a learned thing, beaten into existence by years of fighting and bloodshed. He refuses to admit the suffering it has always caused him.

And secondly, as much as I pester him about it, he never talks about Krennic. It happened years ago when he was captured on a mission. The man tortured him for information he didn't know, drove him past his limits, both physically and mentally, to the very edge of his sanity. When he returned, he was changed, hardened nearly beyond recognition. It took me years just to gain his trust again.

These two things remain. Always. He guards them with his life, even today. He shuts the pain away from the world, deep within himself where even I cannot reach. I used to think he was just trying to keep me safe, but now I find it downright irritating. When two people are as close as we are, there shouldn't be any burden too heavy or gruesome for one to share with the other. But evidently, he lives by a different code. We are as close as two people can be, and yet some things are just not meant to be shared.

* * *

 **0 BBY**

 **YAVIN 4**

Life had not been kind to Benduday Andor. The scars on her face didn't just tell a story, they screamed it. She had learned long ago to ignore the stares, but they bothered her more than she let on. In public, she wore her mask. In solitude, late at night, that's where the danger was. She would face it sitting in front of the mirror. What did they all see when they looked at her, anyway? Wasted youth? Beauty marred? A victim of cruel fate? Sometimes she wished she knew, but mostly she was just annoyed.

Her consolation was in Cassian, always had been. He saw right past the scars, or rather, he knew them well already. He had watched her collect most of them along the way, wiping the blood and patching them up when they were fresh. The ones on her face were a different matter entirely. He had never forgiven himself from not being there to make them better too, and she cherished him for that. She cherished him for a lot of reasons.

But Cassian hadn't been around for days, and Ben was beginning to get fed up with everyone else at headquarters, Mon Mothma especially. She hated the way pity crept into those grey eyes every time they settled on her. Pity was the last thing Ben needed from anyone. Life had not been kind to her, but so what? She told herself there were many worse things than to have one's story branded across one's face. If only these people would learn not to _stare_ so much. Stalking through the hangar, she fixed her gaze straight ahead as the eyes bore into her from all directions. Thinking sensibly, she had started avoiding all life forms in general, but the one Ben was going to see today was not living, _per se_.

With a sigh of relief, she stepped into the hull of the UT-60D Alliance starfighter where it rested outside the hangar. The very same droid she had salvaged from Geonosis was seated in the pilot's chair. He turned as she entered.

"Benduday Andor," he said, his two round light receptors flashing towards her. "You're a sight for malfunctioning optics." Even in the dimness of the U-wing's hull, the scars on her face caught every bit of light in their craggy terrain. But K-2 never seemed to notice. He spoke his mind about many things, but this he had simply accepted.

" _Ben_ ," she pronounced carefully, rolling her eyes as she closed the hatch behind her. "Everyone calls me Ben, Kay. I've told you far too many times."

"And I have told _you_ , the diagnostic capabilities necessary to retain 'nicknames,' as you call them, are not included in my programming." At the word 'nicknames' he succeeded in pouring a great deal of cynicism into the quotation marks he traced in the air with his long, mechanical digits.

Her eyebrows shot up. "Well, I don't know what you _did_ with them, but I definitely put them in there." She jabbed a finger at his smooth, grey head. "Perhaps it got lost somewhere in all the sass you've downloaded."

"I only learned from the best."

"Well you can stuff it when the professor's around." She plunked herself down onto the floor.

A pause, and the droid turned back to the console and continued his systems check. "Someone has short circuits today."

"Yes I do. Because _someone_ is leaving without me. _Again_."

"Well, if you will miss me that much, I—"

"I wasn't talking about you, Kay." It came out more tersely than she wanted, but she was in no current mood to be compassionate.

Another pause. She could almost hear the sparks flying inside that metal brain. "Fine. Then if I was capable of emotion, I expect I would now be feeling joy at the prospect of leaving you here."

"Fine." She folded her arms and stared at her knees, looking up again when K-2 didn't turn away. "Cassian comes back today," she admitted, sensing the question buzzing through his wires, "but Draven is sending him right out again on this wild Bantha chase to Jedha." He had been away for days, rooting around the darkest, rankest places the Galaxy had to offer for information. After the Ring of Kafrene, they had immediately sent a team with K-2 out to Wobani, following the trail of connections to this planet killer. Cassian had travelled far and long after that, hopping from transport to transport to avoid being followed.

"And you think he will not have adequate time to recover from his previous mission."

"Well, yes." _And no, not at all_ , she thought, but kept it to herself.

"Let me put your worries to rest. Taking into account the lack of time Cassian Andor has to recuperate, I estimate his ability to function will only be diminished 8.67 per cent."

In fact, the droid was accurate to the hundredth, but she wasn't listening. "It will throw him off, I know it will."

"I have never known Cassian to ever be 'thrown off'… unless we are including the time he tried to take that wild nexu for a ride. In all my years, he has always been quite a constant, whatever state he was in."

She looked at him then as she would a child. "You're only twelve years old, Kay. Three if you're only counting the years after we reprogrammed you—"

"I am not."

"—and you didn't see him the day we first found you. What a mess. Whichever way you look at it, I've known him longer, so I must know what is best."

"I find that assertion vague and unconvincing." Her smile was immediate. She had taught him that one. She watched the droid as he returned his attention to the dash. Only K-2SO could break her composure with such ease. Somewhere outside, she could hear a shuttle touching down on the landing platform.

"I love you, Kay."

That caught him off guard. The droid turned again in his seat.

"In a purely creator-created sort of way, of course," she clarified.

He regarded her for a moment, his light receptors twitching from side to side. Processing.

"I cannot reciprocate," he said finally. She grinned. "As an automated being, I am not capable—"

"I know, Kay." She scratched at the back of her neck.

"But…if I could..."

"Understood."

"You know that I…"

"Got it, Kay," she said, holding up a hand. He paused, receptors twitching again, nodded satisfactorily, then turned back to his duties.

"Ben?" Someone pounded on the outside of the U-Wing. "Are you in there?"

"Yeah, I'll be out in a second." She got to her feet, crossing the width of the hold in a stride or two and pausing at the hatch. "Kay?"

"Yes?"

"When you get to Jedha, don't just wait on this ship for Cassian to get back. I don't care what he says, you do whatever is necessary to keep him alive."

A third pause as the information was filed away. "Thank you, Benduday. I will take your proposal into consideration."

"It wasn't a propos—." She stopped and pressed her lips together. "Look, let me put it this way. I reprogrammed you once and I can do it again. If you let anything happen to Cassian, I'll have your skinny metal ass for it."

Unperturbed, the droid turned and continued flipping switches. A steam vent somewhere underneath them opened with a spiteful hiss.

"Define 'anything'," he said after a moment.

"Define it yourself."

Another bang on the hull. "Ben!"

She didn't move. "Kay."

"What now?" He refused to look at her this time.

"Do I have your word?"

"Yes."

"Even if you have to fly the ship _to_ him to get him out?"

"It shall be done"—if he could have sighed, he would have—"with no small amount of huff."

She decided to let him have it. She punched the hatch-lift and glanced at K-2 a final time.

"I _do_ love you, Kay."

The droid turned once again as she stepped out of the cockpit, tawny hair catching fire in the late morning light.

"I…love you, too," the droid murmured to the empty ship.

Outside, Ben didn't need to look to see that Cassian was there, leaning against the weather-beaten side of the U-wing. He fell immediately in step with her.

"You don't have much time," she said, hardly glancing at him. "You are required in the war room to meet the contact." This was their way. They almost never bothered with traditional signs of affection, often reverting to name-calling instead. Neither one was very good at 'hello's, and especially not at 'good-bye's.

"Right," he said, squinting against the sun. "Who is he, then?"

" _She_ ," Ben corrected. "Jyn Erso."

Cassian scowled. "Don't like the sound of her."

"Hey, you're lecturing to the Council, here," Ben muttered. "I'm already starting to think this is a bad idea."

The captain didn't give an answer, just lowered his head and slowed his pace until he came to a stop. He placed his hands on his hips as she stopped beside him, her hazel eyes never leaving his face.

When he met her gaze, he inclined his head but a little, looking at her from beneath a heavy brow. The look would have been stern, but his eyes were tired. His face was drawn, his stubble longer than she remembered.

"How are you doing?" He beat her to the question. She knew exactly what he meant. The mood turned so suddenly, she could taste it in the muggy air.

She dropped her gaze to the space between them, shook her head slowly. "I hate that you had to kill that man." She spoke of Tivik. She was back on the Ring of Kafrene. "I hate that I was the one who told you to do it."

He let the truth hang there for a while.

"He knew too much." His tone was shallow. They both knew it wasn't anything close to good enough. "Ben." When she didn't respond he moved closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. "He was only a worker in the mines. He did his job—"

"No." She finally raised her eyes to his. "No, Cassian. Every life counts. Taking one is never to be justified."

She did this often, laid his acts bare for what they were, bad or good, forgivable or not. He shoved such things down. She dug them up. They continued in an endless cycle of burying and exhuming, of hiding and seeking that often left both exhausted. But it was their way. It was necessary. The lives he refused to talk to her about she would always pursue. Every single one mattered to her, because it was he who bore them. _And I took three this time_ , he told himself. She seemed to sense his thoughts. Her eyes softened. They were like liquid gold in the morning light.

"I hate what it does to you. I hate that it ever has to happen in the first place, because I know you won't let me carry that burden with you."

He took a deep breath and squeezed her shoulder once before letting go.

"Some walls must remain standing." Her silence was agreement enough, but her eyes said otherwise.

They continued to walk, entering the dark and bustling hangar.

"I have orders to help you prepare for departure immediately following this meeting," she said, all business again.

"We'll need your best accessories, Lieutenant," he returned, happy to play along.

She nodded distractedly. "Sure."

"And try to save some ration bars for the rest of us, won't you?"

He was rewarded with a prompt smack upside the head. It only made him grin. She was never too distracted to take a swing.

"Piston-head," he heard her grumble as she strode away.

"Mudlicker," he called after her.

* * *

 _ **Mostly dialogue, but I hope you liked all the same.**_

 _ **Reviews are very welcome! Please don't be shy!**_


	5. Choice

_**Before I start, was anyone else as overjoyed as I was to see that they added Cassian to the Star Wars character list? Took them long enough.**_

* * *

I remember those years. Cassian thinks I don't, but I do.

I remember the day he picked up the rocks and broken bottles and hurled them from the rooftops at Imperial soldiers on the streets.

I remember when he told me about it. I watched the fire grow in his eyes. I watched the birth of the rebel that day.

He was six years old.

I remember the day our father died, far away in a protest on Carida. Just one of many. Just a number. He told me Papa had gone away for a while to fight. He told me that for a long time.

I watched him turn bitter that day. I watched the birth of the soldier, the slow burial of the boy deep, deep down. He grew so far away from me. Sometimes, we were light years apart in the same room.

"Ben," he would say, "why can't you just take care of yourself? Why do I have to do _everything_ for you, _all_ the time?"

 _Because Papa has gone away_ , I wanted to say. I never did. I would tell myself that the boy was almost gone, and that the soldier didn't remember what it was like to be helpless.

He was seven years old.

I remember the day he first killed someone. That day I remember best of all. It was the last day I saw the boy. It was a Benduday.

After that day, I knew only the soldier. It was eons until he allowed me to carry my own blaster. He didn't want me to know a burden like his.

He was eight years old.

* * *

 **18 BBY**

 **BAKURA**

"Cassian."

The voice was small and high, like a little bell. It was a voice meant for laughing and pretending and screaming with joy. Instead, it had learned hushed and somber tones. The boy turned around from where he leaned against the counter. His dark hair was wild, his dark eyes wilder. He had just run a long way home from the shuttle bay, the path taking him straight through the very same field and hollow tree where he had first found her. Where he had heard the war begin. He was covered in sweat and grime from his long day away. As he turned around, he thought he must have looked utterly barbaric. He thought surely she would be able to tell what he had done.

He looked at the little girl to whom the voice belonged, no more than five. She hugged the edge of the doorway, as if too scared to come into the kitchen. But the boy knew this little girl, and she never got scared.

"Is Papa coming home soon?"

Even in such early years, her Basic was accented like his. His father had taught them both Festian first, but insisted that they always speak Basic, even when they were alone. Better that their roots could not be traced just by the language they spoke. His father had always thought of such things.

She wore one of his tunics. Since his death on Carida, they mostly just collected dust in a drawer anyway. The cream colored tunic was so big for her that the bottom piled in folds on the floor. She often tripped and fell when she wore it. She often hit the ground hard, bruised her knees, skinned her palms, or sometimes failed to catch herself altogether and got up with a busted lip or a bloody nose. But she never cried. Not this little girl. Her hair fell in ringlets around her pale face, like a tawny halo. Her hazel eyes were always flung wide, eager to take in the world. She hardly missed anything. Like a watchful baby bird.

The rebels that often came to check in on them called her their "little convor". Their little Benduday. They had arranged a schedule of periodic visits after his father had died, to ensure that they were supplied with at least a little food. In turn, the boy was learning from them, carrying out the parts of missions they couldn't. He snuck around mostly, causing diversions, setting charges, stealing bits and pieces. They made him carry a blaster at all times, made sure he knew how to use it. Just in case. But he had never needed it, never pointed it at a living being.

Until today.

"No," he answered finally, trying to keep his voice even. He turned back around and removed a bottle of Bantha milk from the conservator. He took a glass from the cabinet and filled it to the brim with the blue stuff. He tried to lift it, but his hand began to tremble. It was the hand that had pulled the trigger.

"When will Papa come home?"

A growing sense of dread began to creep up the boy's spine. What was she doing here? he thought suddenly. Why had he picked her up that day in the field? He couldn't protect her from the universe. She didn't belong in a war, and yet she would grow up knowing nothing else. Because of him. Because he had chosen for her that day.

"He's never coming home, Ben."

"Why not—"

The glass fell and exploded at his feet, dashing blue milk across the tiles.

"BECAUSE HE'S DEAD!" He screamed it at the top of his voice. He didn't care who heard him. The child didn't flinch, didn't even blink her big hazel eyes. Her face was a small, perfect mask. Like a porcelain doll. The next breath of air he drew set his lungs on fire. Everything part of his body went terribly numb. He sank to the floor, hands over his face.

"Ben…" The sobs wrenched through his body, threatening to tear him apart from inside. "I-I _killed_ s-someone…I p-pulled…the trigger, I…I didn't…I didn't h-have a choice…" The silence seemed to drag on forever, only punctuated by the sound of a fractured soul. What would she think of him? _She must be so afraid of me now_.

He felt a tiny hand tug at his fingers.

" _Cassian_ ," the little bell-voice whispered. He slowly peeled his hands away from his face. They were covered in dirt and snot and saltwater. She perched in front of him, tunic stained blue. She was looking deep into his bloodshot eyes.

"There is _always_ a choice, Cassian. That's what Papa used to say, and we must say it too."

She smiled, wiped his tears away with her sleeve, though more soon replaced them.

"There is always hope."

He smiled and sniffed.

"Bucketbrain," she whispered.

"Stinkweed," he murmured back.

She encircled his neck with her little arms, hugged him like only a child can. He gathered her to him and held her there for a long time, on the kitchen floor, soaked in Bantha milk. And he remembered why he had picked her up that Benduday long ago.

"I will never let you go," he told her.

* * *

 ** _I know it's short, but this is probably my favorite chapter so far, personally._**

 ** _Something fun I learned: the refrigerator equivalent in the Star Wars galaxy is a conservator or a cooling chamber! Makes keeping things cold sound a lot more metal._**

 ** _Also, a quick check to make sure we have our years straight. Since Cassian found Ben as a baby in 23 BBY, we can assume she was born in that year as well. So, in 18 BBY, she was five years old; in the chapter that took place in 3 BBY, she was 20; and in the "present" chapters (0 BBY) she is 23._**

 ** _Hope you all enjoyed and see you next time!_**

 ** _Also, be sure to leave a review and let me know how I'm doing!_**


	6. Playing One's Hand

**0 BBY**

 **YAVIN 4**

"Glareshades." The fluorescent light slid over the tinted lenses as Ben held them out in her hand.

The girl with hard green eyes shook her head and the shades disappeared back into the bag.

On the table was a collection of Ben and Cassian's personal equipment. After his assignment to the Jedha mission, he had promptly discovered the girl to have almost nothing in the way of possessions. He supposed that should be no surprise since she had so recently been sprung from the Wobani Imperial labour camp.

"Macrobinoculars." Another shake of the dark head, and they too disappeared.

Ben selected item after item from the table, submitting each in turn to the girl's scrutiny. The scene looked more to Cassian like a street vendor pawning off her wares to a disinterested customer. The dark-haired girl kept shaking her head at the things offered, occasionally accepting one or two.

"Rangefinder." Headshake. Cassian reached over and took it from Ben's hand before she could put it away, shoving it into his own bag. She stared at him a moment, her empty hand still upheld, then turned her attention back to the items on the table.

"Stun baton." Taken.

Earlier in the war room, Cassian had been hastily debriefed and showered with new information on their new contact—the only shower he'd had in days, he brooded—before they had brought the girl herself in for a chat.

Cassian had not expected what had walked through the door a moment later.

Jyn Erso.

He had not expected her to be so young, younger even than Ben. He had not expected the apathy she displayed both towards her father's ventures and the Rebellion's cause. He had not expected the intensity of fire in her flinty green eyes, or rather the control she exercised over it. More often than not in those twenty-or-so minutes, it had been concentrated on him. He was convinced that if he looked in a mirror, his cheeks would be burned bright red.

All these things surprised him, but the thing he least expected was the conviction with which this girl carried herself. She was a lost thing, broken and distrustful and just plain angry at the universe. Cassian didn't need a datapad or file to know this. But of all the things he had happened upon in this vast and war-torn galaxy, he had never encountered such a strong and deep-rooted sense of peace as Jyn Erso commanded. This girl was weathered and honed, a wild card pulled from a cruel and cosmic deck.

"Glowlamp." Another headshake and the torch was gone.

Come to think of it, Cassian mused to himself as he watched them, so was Ben. No one could ever quite tell what she was thinking, but everyone knew when she had made a choice. When she got it into her head to do something, she was sure as hell going to do it. No second thoughts. That's what made her dangerous. That's what made both of them dangerous—but Jyn perhaps more so. She didn't seem as much given to deliberation, being more wont to act first. He had heard as much himself from his friends on Extraction Team Bravo. This Erso girl had displayed an utter lack of appreciation for her rescuers on Wobani, taking every opportunity to escape both them and the Empire, only restrained by their very own K-2. The Alliance called such people volatiles. Cassian just called them mad fools. _People like that should be handled with utmost care,_ he could remember Draven telling him once. _Imagine you're holding a touchy blaster_. _Always expect it to go off when you're not expecting it to_.

Well, it wasn't like he hadn't had practice, raising someone like Ben. He told himself this in an attempt to maintain a certain level of confidence in his own abilities. It was only one girl, right? _Right_. He had dealt with one, he could surely deal with the other.

But what he hadn't prepared himself for, was having them both together in the same place. Even as he ushered Jyn into the tiny grey room where Ben awaited them, Cassian considered belatedly whether it was such a good idea that they meet at all.

Then they locked eyes and it was done.

The green ones flashed only fleetingly with interest as they found the scars on the other's face. They cleared just as quickly, latched onto the hazel ones, and refused to let go. Those hazel eyes exhibited obvious reservation, but Cassian descried something else in them when they settled on the lost girl with the broken past. He could have sworn it was familiarity. When they shook hands, they did so in silence, like they didn't even need to know each other's names.

To an outsider, the entire exchange might have appeared civil, if somewhat strained. To Cassian, it felt more like being caught between two circling forces of nature. Like watching two starfighters teeter between impending crash and narrow avoidance.

And so he sat, there in the tiny room, at a table with two wild cards, contemplating the amount of concern he should acknowledge, and half-wishing K-2 was there to give him his odds of walking out unscathed. For now, it seemed relatively calm, as they continued on with their peddler-patron routine.

"Bacta patches." Headshake, put away.

"Watch." Headshake, put away.

"Toothbrush." Taken.

"Hydropak." Headshake, offered again. Taken.

"Engine tape." Headshake, put away.

"Blaster." Take—

"No blaster." The words slipped automatically from between Cassian's lips before he even registered what Ben had said.

"Why not?" they asked simultaneously, then glanced at each other edgily, the weapon still halfway between them.

Cassian looked from one to the other and back. "Because the general said so," he replied slowly. They all paused uncomfortably, and he wondered which of the three blasters in the room would go off first. None did, but Ben shot him a glare as she put the weapon away with the bacta patches and the engine tape.

"She should be able to protect herself," she reasoned.

Cassian shook his head, still on eggshells. "Orders." He glanced sideways at Jyn's affronted expression. "Consider it my job to protect you."

"Cassian," said Ben, "one blaster's no good between two people if they're cornered by a squadron of troopers."

"So, we won't get cornered." The mood was precariously balanced, and he'd be damned if he was the one to upset it, but he would not tolerate insubordination, especially not from Ben.

Her brows hit the sky, but after a moment she continued her work.

"Comlink." A small nod. It passed from one scarred and calloused hand to the other.

"Why is everyone here so willing to trust me with this?" Jyn wasn't talking about the comlink. She was talking about their mission.

"Not all of us are," muttered Cassian, still eyeing her askance, "but we know you want freedom, and this is how you're going to get it."

"You don't know what I want." Her green eyes were calm as ever, her voice carefully flat. "You don't know what I could do if I decide to rebel." Rebel against the Rebellion? There was not a doubt in Cassian's mind that she not only meant those words, but was entirely capable of carrying them out. He held those burning eyes for a moment, but didn't say anything.

"Forgery of official documents, high-class security infiltration, years of combat experience, evasion of capture…" Cassian and Jyn both turned at this mantra. While she had not been cleared to sit in on the war room brief, Ben had evidently been nosing around while she waited for them.

Hazel eyes bore into green. The act was over. "That may sound like your record, but it's not. I can do most everything you can do, Jyn Erso. And I daresay I've been doing it longer. We don't need you just for your skillset. We wouldn't break just any criminal free." The way she said 'criminal' caused Jyn's eyes to narrow.

"You were selected based on who you know," Cassian interjected, placing more items from the table into his own bag. "Any link to information about this superweapon brings us hope."

"Hope," the girl mused, fiddling with the comlink in her hands. "Is hope all you people can give to the Rebellion?"

Cassian dropped his bag, practically slammed it down onto the tabletop, surprising even himself. Jyn slowly lifted her head to meet his gaze. He looked her dead on this time.

"Rebellions are built on hope," he said quietly, knowing his tone hardly matched the intensity in his dark gaze. _Like a touchy blaster_. He caught the flicker of something in her eyes. He could not have said what it was.

"Rebellions aren't just built on hope, Cassian." He turned his gaze from green to hazel. Ben only regarded him for a moment before turning to the girl. "They're built on people like you."

"Criminals?"

The immediacy and derision of the response deepened Cassian's scowl, but Ben's features remained even. The tawny head twitched to the side.

"The hopeless," she answered. "Unfortunates and desperates. Those who have nothing left to lose. Those who will do what is necessary." She tipped her head to the other side and pierced Jyn with her gaze. "Those who will do the impossible."

"Is that so?"

The mask fell into place again. The hazel eyes blinked once.

"That is what I believe."

Jyn said nothing, just put the commlink away in her bag. Cassian felt as if this storm were on the edge of breaking. They were all saved by one little corporal, who poked his head through the door and told them it was time. Cassian and Ben rose first, waiting in a tense silence as Jyn zipped her bag shut and stood. She jostled Ben's shoulder as she passed, and disappeared through the doorway. Hazel eyes collided with sable. They exchanged a brief and incredulous glance before following.

Side-by-side and wordless, they strode down the hall until they were halfway to door that led out to the hangar. Jyn waited just inside.

"Happy flying, spacehead," Ben muttered into Cassian's ear before turning down the next hallway and leaving him to approach his new and reluctant charge alone.

 _Good_ , Cassian thought, despite the enormity of the task before him. As long as Ben had the mind to joke, she was neither too mad nor too worried. No good-byes necessary. He would be back.

The assurance in this thought was soured somewhere between the hangar door and the U-wing, when a voice calling "Captain Andor!" stopped him in his tracks. General Draven. Jyn walked on, while he waited for his superior. Even as the general opened his mouth, Cassian's heart started to sink. Things were about to become much more complicated.

"Galen Erso is vital to the Empire's weapon program." Draven's tone was low and grave. "Forget what you heard in there. There will be no extraction." Cassian's heart reached the soles of his boots. He knew what came next.

"You find him, you kill him. Then and there."

He kept his features expressionless as the general walked away. Mislead and terminate. Deceive and murder. No good words for these things, no matter whose banner they were executed under. Somewhere in his boots, his heart twisted, just a twinge of doubt. Should he tell Ben?

 _Cassian_. He heard a voice, high and bell-like in his head. _There_ _is always a choice_.

No. Orders were orders. Galen Erso was not her burden. He regretted ever telling her about that first man he had killed. All those years ago, he had vowed never again. This was Cassian's life. The crumby hand fate had dealt him. He turned and continued toward the U-wing and the condemned man's daughter within, treading all the while on his own heart where it still lay in his boots.

* * *

Aboard the U-wing, Jyn Erso withdrew the blaster from inside her jacket. Ben was sharp, she would give her that. Her brother—or whoever he was—had suspected nothing as she brushed past the tawny-headed girl in the grey room, the weapon passing flawlessly between them. The K-2SO unit, however, was not fooled for a second.

"Why does she get a blaster, and I don't?"

When the captain interrogated her, she claimed she had 'found it', but the truth was something he would not have liked. Deep down, Jyn thought the intention behind the smuggled blaster was more for his benefit than hers. As the ship rose from the landing platform and the jungles of Yavin 4 fell away beneath them, the sultry words of the man in the pilot's chair echoed through her thoughts.

 _Rebellions are built on hope_. He had said it like he had been holding onto it for a long time.

Not much later, on Jedha, she would surprise him with the same skepticism, and he would surprise her with the same single-minded response.

Neither had any idea of the change that had begun the moment Jyn stepped through the door of that war room, both in the Rebellion and in Cassian's own life. Neither had any clue of the things they were about to set in motion.

* * *

 ** _Whew! Is it hot it here or is it just me? Sparks flying in all directions, and our poor Cassian just can't seem to catch a break._**

 ** _Well folks, that's us halfway through my story._**

 ** _I'd love to hear from you all who are reading this story! In a few chapters, I may be asking for your help. Please review!_**


	7. The Other Side of Fortune

" _The misfortune to be born when I was, where I was. That was a piece of bad luck_."—Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

* * *

 **15 BBY**

 **BAKURA**

I woke to the sound of coughing.

"Cassian," Ben wheezed. I shot up in bed. Dawn light was just filtering in through the curtain, but it seemed dimmer in here than usual. I glanced about in the semi-dark, puzzling. When my eyes found Ben, she was doubled over on the edge of her bed, hand held to her stomach. Coughing fits were a rarity in our house.

"Ben? What—" Then I choked on the air too.

I glanced down at the door. There was smoke pouring in from the edges.

"Ben!" I jumped up and ran to her. "Ben, the house is on fire."

Her hazel eyes met mine and she nodded. She understood. I pulled her, still coughing, to her feet and led her to the door.

The flames were ravenous. They consumed the table and the cabinets and the doorway to the kitchen. They danced down the hall uninvited, setting light to the drawings Ben had made and hung there. They hissed and cracked and lashed at our skin with searing teeth.

I pulled her back. The front door was not an option.

Back down at the other end of the hall, there was the back door. Daylight and the promise of freedom from this burning prison taunted us from the other side, spilling in from the tiny glass window. It couldn't have been more than a few yards away, but it seemed to take an eternity to get there. The smoke screened our vision, filled our lungs, stung our eyes. The heat nipped at our bare heels, bellowed at us with its hellish breath. Ben leaned more and more into my side. I braced my hand against the wall with each pained step closer to that door, trying to see through the tears that streamed from my eyes. The inferno chased us all the way down the hall, erasing any memory of the lives we had lived there, until all that remained was the door at the end and the promise of the other side.

The doorknob seared my palm when I gripped it, but I held onto it and twisted hard.

We fell through the back door and out into fresh air, scrambling back to our feet as smoke poured out behind us. I heard a familiar droning sound and turned in time to see two stormtroopers tearing away on their speeder bikes. Behind us, the roof of our house was already collapsing in places. In a few minutes it would be ashes. I looked up to see more smoke columns rising all along the horizon. The Empire was burning lives.

At the edge of our vegetable patch, we had to stop because of the smoke in Ben's lungs. She coughed until she spat blood.

"Come on," I whispered in her ear, and then we were moving again. I wanted nothing more than to let her rest, but they would be back, I knew. They would be combing the forests and fields for stragglers. We needed to be as far away from civilization as we could get.

I urged her into a sprint and after a few moments of struggling, she matched my strides with her little legs. We ran until we hardly recognized anything. Then we saw a small ruins ahead of us.

The foundations were made of stone, probably the bones of an ancient shrine, or a Guardian's dwelling. Whatever its original purpose, it had since fallen into disrepair and much less respectable hands. The frame was still stone, but the gaps where the walls had been were draped with sheets of old metal. An anachronistic patchwork. Remnants of cooking fires and bedding were strewn about within. An outpost or a rebel camp. All I saw was a hiding place.

I dragged her into the cool shadows. There in the darkness, struggling for air, we soon filled the place with the smell of smoke. It clung to our clothes and hair like unwanted memories. She crouched in a corner of the stone frame, while I leaned against the flimsy metal wall a couple feet away. After a few minutes of steady breathing, we locked eyes, searching for comfort or relief that just wasn't there. Reality was setting in slowly for both of us.

" _Cassian_ ," she whispered.

" _What_?"

" _Are we going to die_?" I would have expected something along the lines of 'keep me safe,' or 'I'm scared' from an eight-year-old. This question bordered on pragmatic. Imagine growing up with those sorts of questions constantly asked of you.

Before I could respond, footsteps sounded outside. Whoever it was, they were in a hurry. Shoes slapped concrete as they came to a halt just on the other side of our metal wall. We heard gasps for air not three feet from where we were hiding.

Ben braced herself against the metal and began to stand. She was ready to run again. I immediately pushed her back down, knowing we needed to stay and be quiet. It was harder than I intended. As she fell, her left hand slipped and caught on a jagged edge. She didn't seem to realize at first what had happened, not until the blood began to flow. She stared down at her sliced hand for a moment, then looked up at me. No pain in those eyes. Not this little girl.

The heavy breathing outside had stopped at the sound of her fall. Someone was listening.

I laid a finger on my lips to keep her silent. After a moment, she mirrored me with her left hand. A stream of blood from the gash drew a dark line down her arm, but she didn't seem to notice. Not once did her eyes leave mine.

A few minutes passed in silence. We heard a few clicks and beeps from outside, and then the footsteps finally faded away.

I immediately ripped a piece of my tunic off and began to bind her hand as best I could. She watched me with something close to fascination. Then I remembered she had asked me a question.

"Ben." Her head snapped up, eyes calm. "Everything is going to be alright." I said it as confidently as I could.

"But home is gone," she reminded me. "Where will we go?" The blood was already seeping through my meager efforts. "We're going to die, aren't we?"

"Hey." I grabbed her shoulder with a blood-caked hand. "There is always hope, remember?" I offered a weak smile. "Just like Papa used to say."

Her smile was stronger, gap-toothed in the front. It filled me such that I began to believe my own words. I began to hope that they were true.

"Buckethead," I said.

She opened her mouth to respond, when something exploded just on the other side of our flimsy wall. The metal sheet blew right off and slammed into me from the right and that was the last thing I remembered.

I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up choking on dust. Every part of me burned. My vision was spotty, my ears stuffed with cotton. I tried to sit up, move even the smallest part of my body, but I couldn't. I was paralyzed.

"Ben?"

The muffled word resonated through my skull. I was answered by a high-pitched ringing that caused my head to pound. It hurt so badly, I nearly blacked out again. After a few minutes lying there, I realized I wasn't paralyzed, but rather trapped under the metal sheet that had just previously been our refuge. It took me nearly half an hour to squirm out from under it, scraping every inch of exposed skin in the process. When I looked around, I found that I was ten feet from the place I had started. The flimsy metal wall had carried me with it through the air and pinned me to the ground.

I stood, ignoring the black spots in front of my eyes and the throbbing in my skull.

"Ben?"

I said it a little louder, holding a hand to my head to keep it from splitting in two. My hair was matted and sticky. I glanced down at the metal sheet that had nearly killed me.

No, it had saved me. The side that had been facing the blast was scorched and pitted. I bent to try and lift it, thinking she must be under there as well. Then with a wrench I remembered she had been in the corner. She had been next to the stones when the bomb went off. I snapped my head up only to see that the ancient frame had crumbled to a pile on the ground. She was nowhere to be seen.

"BEN!"

I searched for hours, digging through the rubble. I kept expecting to see pieces of her lying about, but all I found was blood. It was everywhere. I screamed for her over and over again, screamed long after my voice had failed and her name was just a croak in my parched throat. She was just gone. I could only imagine her small, pale body buried somewhere beneath me. Broken and cold. Hazel eyes flung wide in surprise. Some response to my insult frozen on her blue lips.

Soon after, a few men found me lying in the ashes, too tired to move, still croaking her name. I don't know what would have happened to me if they had been Imperials, and from what I've seen of the Empire, I don't much care to think about it. If stormtroopers had arrived while I was out, I would have been concealed by that metal sheet anyway. As fate would have it, the Rebellion got to me first. Rebel guerrillas. No affiliations to the Alliance. Just angry men with bombs.

I found out later it was one of theirs that had blown us to hell. They set it off as a distraction, to draw off troops from their primary target. It didn't work, they told me. All I could think of was that little girl with a finger pressed to her lips and blood running down her arm. If we hadn't been so quiet, they would have found us both and perhaps helped us. If I hadn't kept her from running, we both would have walked out of there that day. If…if…if…

If there wasn't a war, children like her wouldn't be blown to pieces by bombs.

Affiliations or not, it was the Rebellion that lost Ben to me. I have never forgiven them for that.

* * *

I do not believe that time heals all wounds. I've seen some people use their trials as opportunities to grow, to tear down walls.

Me?

I built them. They started that day on Bakura. Block by block they rose around my heart. Impossible and terrible. Impenetrable. I built them because I didn't know what else to do. Because I thought they were my best shot at living something resembling a normal life. Because I never thought in a thousand light years that I would ever need to feel again.

Yeah, total bantha shit.

Life turned out to be so much crueler than even I could imagine. Those walls truly were impenetrable; years of building and fortifying had made sure of that. No one could bring them all down. Some just remained, long after they were welcome.

For years, they haven't budged. Until yesterday, when I met Jyn Erso.

* * *

 ** _Ewwwwww rusty metal? Get that girl a tetanus shot!_**

 ** _Also I apologize for any inaccuracies. I'm not well-versed on the mechanics of explosions, and for all I know, that one could have been fatal regardless of metal or stone or whatever, but please just bear with me._**

 ** _Also, just so you don't have to do the math, Ben is eight years old (which I thinkI mention in there) and Cassian is eleven._**

 ** _You're welcome._**

 ** _Hope to post next chapter by Wednesday so keep your eyes open!_**


	8. Defectors All

**_Per usual, I broke my last promise to you all, and terribly so. I got my head into my other fic, The Hobbit: A Forgotten Chapter (give it a read, it's just getting good!) and got carried away on that unexpected journey. I am very much at a crossroads as far this story goes. I am trying to time everything out right as we alternate between present and flashbacks._**

 ** _Anyway, please enjoy!_**

* * *

 **0 BBY**

 **HYPERSPACE**

Cassian was meticulous. With a job that had him brushing elbows with death on a daily basis, it was no wonder. Many years of this truth grinding away at his humanity had left him not much of anything on which to depend.

Ben would perhaps be the exception to this, but there were years Cassian remembered too vividly when he had not had even her to lean on. A block of time, dark and impassable, when she had been far, far away from him, in the most literal and physical sense imaginable.

In those years especially, Cassian had assumed the necessity of remaining "by-the-book," regardless of the price paid. The Alliance's secret was the same as the Empire's. Order. It kept everyone alive—or at least gave them a better chance of staying that way. Commands were to be obeyed, the Rebellion's precepts upheld at every cost. For Cassian, the rules were simple, as long as he didn't think too hard about what he was asked to do. The rules were his safety, his numb default. In the blackest of times, they were his tremulous link to sanity.

It was because of this that it came as such a shock to Cassian, when he found himself doubting his orders to kill Galen Erso. This was not the slight twinge he had felt back on Yavin 4. It was a deep pang from somewhere in his chest. Even as he relayed his message to base, it stabbed and tugged and prickled at the back of his neck.

" _Weapon confirmed_ ," he whispered. " _Jedha destroyed. Mission target located on Eadu. Please advise_."

With every word he whispered into the mic, he felt like he was being torn further and further in two. No order should feel this wrong, but the rules did not tolerate conscience.

It was something about this girl, this impossible and friendless girl. She was rude and hard and angry, and yet back on Jedha, he had seen a different person. She had risked a dash through blaster fire to save a little girl in the middle of the street. The next minute, she had singlehandedly taken out five stormtroopers (three of those with just her baton), and a K-2SO unit (thankfully not _theirs_ ). Only a little while later she had left her childhood behind with her guardian and friend to die, staring down the wall of destruction that hurtled at them from across the Jedha desert.

Because of her, they had made it this far. Because of her, they had Bodhi Rook, the defector Imperial pilot and key to the Erso plans (Cassian couldn't imagine a man like him having enough courage to pet a bantha, let alone betray the Empire, but sure enough, here he was). Because of her (and the kyber crystal around her neck), they had two new allies in Chirrut Îmwe, a blind but no less capable warrior monk, and Baze Malbus, the ill-tempered assassin who passed as his companion. Because of her, they had not been killed immediately by Saw Gerrera's men, and had been released in time to escape Jedha. Because of her, they were all together, still breathing—

—and en route to kill her father.

Cassian watched her from the edge of his vision. She sat with her hands folded in front of her mouth, the dust of the dead planet still caked in her hair. Those green eyes were closed. They had remained dry for the entirety of their journey as far as he had seen, though he had watched her lose almost everything on that planet. That pang of doubt stabbed through his chest again. It was something about this girl…

A burst of static assaulted his ears. " _Orders still stand_ ," said the grainy voice. " _Proceed with haste. Stick to the plan._ " Cassian let his head fall towards his chest as it grew heavier and heavier.

"Understood," he said, then hung up the headpiece and turned to Kay. "Set course for Eadu."

"Setting course for Eadu."

"Is that where my father is?" The girl was leaning toward him. Her eyes were so big they could have swallowed him.

"I think so." Cassian felt his features slip into impassivity. _A dirty line of work_ , he reminded himself. _No conscience_.

The Imperial pilot began to speak, but Cassian was hardly listening. A matter of hours had passed since their departure from Yavin 4 and already his world was tilting off its axis. He didn't know which way was up. He didn't know what to think anymore.

A few hours' time was hardly enough for him, but at the end of it, they had nearly reached Eadu. The stars were still bright lines outside the U-wing's windscreen when he began to type at the little keypad on the comm console. Today, he needed more than the answers the book could give him.

* * *

 **YAVIN 4**

Davits Draven was no stranger to subordination. Sooner or later, stresses of the job got the best of everyone. He had suffered outbursts and tantrums and blatant disregard, but never had he witnessed such an unnerving silence as Benduday Andor's. Hers was a constant, wordless defiance, and yet it raged there in those hazel eyes of hers. They saw right through his orders and his general's stars. They saw right through everything, and that's what made her dangerous.

 _Defector_.

He didn't know why, but the word came to mind every time he laid eyes on her. It rolled off of her in waves, like she was charging some deep and innate disobedience that would one day break seething through that tranquil exterior.

He had just given the order for Cassian to proceed with the original mission when he felt her presence. Even from the shadows, her silent dissatisfaction filled the room. His men were nervous enough as it was, their faces pale in the gloom. She didn't need to be here for this. Once his orders had been relayed, Draven paced across the war room to her, steeling himself.

The sight of the datapad in her hands made his breath stick momentarily in his throat. She appeared not to notice his approach, as she frowned down at it.

"Lieutenant Andor." Her head snapped up, tawny hair falling into her eyes.

"Sir." The datapad disappeared behind her back. It distracted Draven just long enough to overlook the bitter derision in her tone.

"Mobilize Red Squadron pending departure for Eadu," he said. "Any loss of contact is grounds for deployment. If they succeed, they will need all the help they can get to make it back."

" _If_ , sir?" It seemed she couldn't hold back her disdain any more than Draven could hold back his outrage. He pressed his thin lips into a line.

"Yes, lieutenant," he said through his teeth. " _If_." He impaled her with his stare as best he could. "You have your orders." He turned his back to her, and after a moment, he felt her go.

* * *

Ben clutched the datapad to her chest wherever she went. General Draven had known when he saw her in the war room. Red Squadron knew when she entered the hangar. Bravo Team knew when they passed her in the hall. Everyone knew, but no one said anything. She didn't always do it, but when she did, it meant she felt something bad was going to happen. Today, she felt it in her bones. Wherever she went, people saw she carried it, like a little tawny-haired omen.

Years ago, she and Cassian had cooked up a special coding system for exchanging messages, only for emergencies. One had never come up. Today, though, was apparently different. A few hours of restless pacing around base and Ben was heading back to the war room when it happened. A tiny red light began to flash on the datapad. She halted in the hallway just outside the control room and stared at for a moment before turning the screen on. A strange cool tide suddenly flooded through her body.

- _Tell me what to do_ -

That's all it said, but it meant everything to her. Ben smiled now, despite the dread in her bones, despite the blasted scars on her face, and despite the war that had given them both to her.

He trusted her again, and for now, that was enough. She began to type, lost in thought. What had changed? After a moment, her smile widened. It was the girl. Something about that green-eyed girl…

A couple seconds after pressing send, Ben reentered the war room and lost her reason to smile.

"Try them again," Draven told the technician at the comm.

"I am, sir, we—the signal's gone dead."

 _Dead_. The cool, soothing tide receded as quickly as it had come, and Ben felt her heart begin to sink against her will. Death was always a possibility, she told herself. Hadn't they decided that a long time ago?

"Squadron up." Draven's words cut her like vibro-daggers. "Target Eadu."

But she realized it wasn't this turn of events that weighed on her heart. It was the fact that Cassian was so far away. He was alone and she couldn't do anything. She would never get there in time.

 _He's not alone_ , said a voice somewhere in the back of her head. She eyed Draven for a moment before turning to leave. Something about that girl…

* * *

 **EADU**

Bodhi Rook didn't know why these things always happened to him. He paused for a moment to wipe some of the rain from his eyes before continuing. He liked to think he was born to be the butt of some big cosmic joke, but he told himself that he couldn't be the only one. He hadn't asked for any of it, after all.

He had started out as a Jedha native with a spotty record and a permanent hangover. The Empire had promised him direction. Structure. He never knew he craved it, _needed_ it, until he had signed up. After that, all he wanted to do was fly. He trained for two years and was denied admission into the starfighter program before eventually landing the position of cargo pilot back on Jedha. He learned that ignorance was a luxury. The less he knew the better.

Three years later, Galen Erso stepped onto his ship and into his life, and it was all over. The anonymity, the security, the oblivion. All of it. Of all the cargo shuttles in all the Galaxy, Galen Erso stepped onto his, and the day he did was the day Bodhi Rook joined the war.

And it hadn't been a graceful joining either (more like an inexorable dragging). Then again, nothing about Bodhi's life had ever been truly graceful. He cursed as he lost his footing on a slippery rock and scraped his shins from ankle to knee. He allowed himself one moment on the ground, biting back a groan of pain, before pushing himself back to his feet.

No, as a matter of fact, it all started with food. Bodhi had walked into the mess hall on Eadu and gotten immediately overwhelmed by the number of options available to him. He had resorted to asking the nearest officer for advice on what was good. Like the punch line of another cosmic joke, that officer was Galen Erso. How was he to know? Such a tired and defeated-looking man he seemed and yet he carried such a precious secret, one that could change the tides of war, but only if it was delivered in time. And time was fast running out for Galen Erso. Direct carrier was his only chance of getting it to the Alliance, and the moment that Bodhi asked him if the breakfast flatcakes were any good, he had unwittingly volunteered himself as pigeon. And Bodhi had done his job. Yet, he had found that in doing so, he could never go back to the way things were. He could never reclaim that sweet ignorance.

And so here he was, stumbling on through the dark and the rain, expected to find a conveniently unattended Imperial ship to steal. Simple, right? He laughed humorlessly to himself, the rain streaming down his face and flooding into his open mouth. He may be a pilot, and a defector at that, but that didn't make him anything close to a thief. _Fi_ _nding_ a ship had been the easy part. An SW-0608 Imperial Shuttle, but very heavily attended, and thus very hard to steal.

He headed for the wreckage of the U-wing first to grab his things. No use raising any alarms before they absolutely had to. He ducked into the hull, dripping and breathless, expecting to see the remaining four members of the crew. Gone. Did no one know how to obey orders? He turned confusedly toward the cockpit, yelling in surprise when he saw two glowing round eyes staring back at him from the darkness. He fell back onto the durasteel floor as they hovered closer.

"Have your equilibrium sensors malfunctioned?" A round metal face appeared around the eyes as they slid into the dim blue light of the hull.

He looked up at it, thinking he would never get used to looking at this droid as a rebel. The sight of the white Imperial insignia on that shoulder would always be a reminder of who he had betrayed.

"No, I—"

"Have you found us a ship yet?" This blasted droid really needed a systems overhaul.

"What?"

If those light receptors could have rolled. "You are a pilot, are you not, Bodhi Rook?" They twitched, eyeing him up and down. "Did your defecting render you incapable of flight?"

Bodhi was so enraged he could hardly speak. He scrambled indignantly to his feet. "As a matter of fact I have found a ship, so you can just cool your power core, alright?"

His outburst surprised them both into silence. The glowing round receptors regarded him once more, completely unreadable.

"Just as I thought." The droid drew back into the shadows and continued restoring the comm system. Bodhi wasn't sure what he meant, but he didn't really have enough energy to care.

His entire frame shivered with the damp as he crossed the hull. When he bent to grab his bag, his vision went momentarily black. He stood slowly and shook his head to clear it, trying to remain calm. Bor Gullet. He shuddered, but not because of the damp this time. If he allowed himself, he could still feel the slimy tentacles around his head, grasping at his face. Few places in his mind had been left unravished by that creature, and he feared the damage may be permanent. He smiled to himself, still waiting for his eyes to clear. Just another cosmic joke. Just another helping of unlucky.

He blinked hard as his vision returned. Then something up near the cockpit caught his eye. It was the communications console the captain had used earlier to contact his rebel base. There was a yellow button blinking to the right of the keypad.

"What's this?" he asked. The droid turned and looked at the button.

"A new message. It is typed, not an audio transmission."

Bodhi pushed the button and sure enough, a series of numbers and letters typed themselves across the black screen. Encrypted. Bodhi hesitated, then pulled a datapad out of his bag, connected it to the screen, and began typing on the keyboard. He had told no one as of yet, but Galen's reasons for choosing him were not just because of his low profile. They were also because of his decoding skills. Somewhere amidst the illicit gamblings and drunken escapades of his youth, Bodhi had learned hacking from some of the vilest under lords Jedha had to offer. They were wicked to be certain, but they were good at what they did. As far as Bodhi Rook was concerned—and indeed, Galen Erso as well—he had learned from the very best.

A few minutes later, he stared down at the decoded message. He didn't know who sent it, where it had come from, or what it was in response to. It read:

- _What would you do if it was our father_ -

He only had a moment to frown before the comms came back up.

"By the Maker," said the droid.

"What?"

"Red Squadron is here."

Bodhi's stomach dropped. He didn't need to look, he just knew it was time to go. He started gathering supplies wondering how in the Void a defector pair such as themselves were going to steal that ship.

"Cassian?" said the droid into the mic. "Cassian, can you hear me?"

* * *

Screw the book.

Cassian didn't know if it was the appearance of Krennic or if there had always been a small bit of defector blood coursing through his veins. He hardly cared anymore.

He squinted at Galen Erso's head through the rangefinder he had taken from Ben's hand. It seemed like years ago now.

Screw the kriffing book.

In a darker time, he had lived by it, out of pure necessity. For years after that time passed, he continued to rely on it. As he lay there alone on that Force-forsaken sithspit of wet rock, he realized he was a fool. His reason for living all this time was not a cause or a set of rules. His reason was a little girl. He had found her in a field on Bakura a thousand years ago. He was neglecting the one person he should have always, always let in.

 _Cassian._ It was that high little voice, hushed to a whisper.

He took his eye from the blaster scope. In that moment, he felt himself falling, his world spinning away from his control, his life turning itself inside out. Then everything happened at once.

He saw her, the dark-haired girl, slipping through the stormy Eadu night.

Then Kay's voice said his name over the commlink, heralding the approach of rebel starfighters.

Then he looked back at the girl standing there on the platform and decided he couldn't lose her.

Then the fighters were upon them, kindling the darkness with mean streaks of red.

"Jyn. No!"

 _There is always a choice._

One moment, Cassian was falling. The next moment, his feet hit solid ground. He threw away the rules, released his hold on sanity. He ran to the girl in the rain, whispered "come on" in her ear the way he had done so many years ago when his own life was burning behind him.

He never saw the message Ben had sent, but he didn't need to. He knew he had done it right. All along, he had had her to lean on, and it had taken an entirely different person to show him that. That person ran beside him through the rain. She had dark hair and green eyes that could burn holes through metal.

Those same eyes spat fire at him. As he returned with his own anger, he saw something there mingled with the fire. It was pain. It sent shudders through his being, tremors that put cracks in the stones he had laid so carefully long ago.

How she must hate him for what he had done. She would loathe him for the rest of their lives, but it hardly mattered to him anymore.

 _There is always hope._

All along, he had had someone to lean on. Her name was Benduday. She was thousands of light years away.

And now as he looked at the sodden girl with the lost green eyes, he realized he had finally found someone to bring down his walls.

* * *

 ** _Sorry this one was so long. I had to lump two chapters into one to make room for other stuff later on._**

 ** _I like this chapter. It felt like a bunch of little vignettes stitched together, and it was nice getting into a different character's head as well. I like to think Bodhi's mind moves pretty fast, both out of nerves and intelligence, so I threw in some one-worded sentences. And fun fact: in the Rogue One novel, it is revealed that Bodhi first met Galen by asking him which food was good in the meal line._**

 ** _I hope you enjoyed and PLEASE review with any suggestions or critiques. In the not-too-distant future I will be specifically asking for advice with my story from all of you. Keep your eyes open!_**


	9. Faulty Logic

General Draven recruited me. I think I would have died very young had he not reached me when he did. I was a guerilla rebel in the Outer Rim, angry and reckless and tortured by the things I couldn't forget. When I lost Ben, I lost the most important part of myself.

Without my hope, I was someone else.

But evidently, Draven liked that someone else.

Where there was rage, he saw passion. Where there were scars, he saw experience. Where there was numbness, he saw strength. All the right stuff was there, it just had to be channeled, and I was nothing if not malleable. I was his clay soldier. With me, he built his perfect agent. His name is Captain Andor. Well, Lieutenant Andor to start.

I was a droid. Wind me up and away I would go. My work was clean and concise. The recruitments, the operations, even the kills. Not a twinge of doubt, not a thought of my own. Those walls were strong. I did what I was told because for years, it was all that made sense to me. And for years I got by. Until one small glitch landed me in the hands of the Empire. Ben told you I don't like to talk about Krennic and she's right, but needs must I suppose. It was a brief stay. Draven did everything in his power to get his favorite soldier back.

One glitch was all it took, just a spark of humanity in those unfeeling circuits.

I've told the General a lot of things about myself. He knows more than almost anyone, but for a while, I breathed not a word to him about Ben. By the time Draven found me, I had not seen her for five years. By the time I caught wind of her again, it had been nine.

* * *

 **6 BBY**

 **CARIDA**

It was faint. Hardly a trace, just a tendril of a scent from a trail gone nine years cold. It was enough, though, enough for him to sidetrack his deep cover operation on Carida.

It was insanity. A wild hope and a mad leap and it had landed him in a hot, windowless room on a durasteel table with an incompetent interrogator and a torture droid hovering over his prone body.

It was chilling. A shiny black orb with one red eye, and by that point, he could hardly hold the image of it steady as it swam before his line of sight. The end of one appendage was smoking from the electrical charge it had sent through his body not a moment ago. He could still feel it rippling through his bones. It crackled in the sweat that glazed every inch of skin. His wrists and ankles ached from where the restraints had held them as his frame convulsed. The one arm retracted back into the shiny black sphere, and another extended. This one had a thin, sharp probe in its metal grasp.

"You know," said a voice somewhere to his right, "you're only making this harder on yourself." It had perhaps a touch of remorse in it.

 _Having a conscience in the Empire is a dangerous thing_ , he wanted to say, but the droid was already back at work. With surgical precision, it inserted the probe between two of his ribs. The tip went right through the gray fabric of his cadet's uniform, right through skin and muscle and bone, to press delicately against the lung and its blood vessels.

"Who are your contacts on Carida?" asked the voice.

Clenching his teeth hard, the man on the table breathed slowly, absorbing the pain as it washed over him. He had been well-trained for this, for clamming up, but also for taking pain. The key was to acknowledge it as it came and not to think too hard about what was actually happening to his body. If he could manage it in his mind, that was half the battle won. Extra points if he found a good distraction.

The man on the table angled his gaze down toward his feet and caught sight of a uniformed girl standing in the shadows by the door. She couldn't have been more than a teenager, but one look at her face told him she had already seen the war up close. _The Empire recruits as young as the Rebellion these days_ , he mused. The droid pushed the probe in just a fraction. It was enough to get his attention. His eyes returned to the shiny black orb and its red eye.

"I'll ask again." The voice broke in its owner's frustration. "Who are your contacts on Carida?"

 _Why do they make her watch?_ The man on the table couldn't stop his thoughts from wondering back to the girl who stood against the wall. Any distraction. It must be some form of punishment, or worse, training. Perhaps she _wanted_ to watch. Perhaps one day it would be her in this room bent over another martyr to the rebel cause. He chanced on more look at her. Eyes like blaster canons. She looked hard enough for the job, certainly harder than this prepubescent weakling assigned to him. Perhaps one day she would be the one to extract vital secrets and take the Rebellion down. _Not today, though, thank the stars_. He smiled, rewarded only by the probe's further introduction into his body. He felt his breath cut short, collecting uselessly at the back of his throat.

Another moment and the door to the room slid open. A rush of fresh air hit his nostrils and streamed over his feverish skin. He saw a blur of white from the corner of his eye.

"Commander," said the voice to his right.

"Sergeant," said the newcomer from the threshold. The droid, sensing the authority that has just entered, released the probe and retreated silently from the table. "I'll take care of this one."

The soldier began packing his things away, setting a hand on the probe to remove it. The man on the table closed his eyes in preparation. "Yes, sir. I—"

"Stop." The sergeant's hand froze on the handle. "Keep that in." The man on the table felt himself go weak. Somehow, not having the probe removed was worse.

"You are dismissed." A pause and he imagined the man in white turning to the girl where she stood at attention against the wall. "Both of you."

The girl spoke then, for the first time. "Sir, I think—"

" _Now_ ," came the command fringed with impatience. Yes, she definitely enjoyed watching. The man on the table wondered idly whether he had heard an accent in those three words or if it was just his adrenaline-soaked brain. From what he had seen, accents were not particularly common in the Empire. He had had to stifle his own on Carida, covering his Festian roots with some parody of the Imperial inflection. It was the best he could do, and it still gave him pleasure to note that no one had noticed how awfully executed it had been.

Head resting against durasteel, the man on the table listened to the footsteps as they thumped and squeaked out into the hall and faded away.

He let his mind slide shut again along with the door. He locked it off to the identity he owned, to the secrets he knew, to the orders he had been given. When that door shut it was just a room again.

Just a dark, hot room with man on a durasteel table and another man in a white cloak.

The latter had eyes like chips of cerulean sky. The former could see them even through pain-blurred vision. Fixed and wide, they spoke of innocence and long-forgotten childhood. They were a lie, though, they along with the spotless cloak. A camouflage to the depravity and decay that lay beneath. No one made it to the rank of commander without blackening his soul first.

"Do you know who I am, Cassian?" The man on the table wondered vaguely how the man in the cloak had come to know his name. The man in the cloak waited a few moments, hardly expecting the man on the table to respond. The blue eyes flicked away, disinterested, and the white cloak followed. He began to pace slowly around the table.

"Orson Callan Krennic." He spoke each syllable very carefully, as if expecting the man on the table to commit it to memory. Each name was punctuated by a step. The man on the table allowed them to slip from his mind. "You've caused me great trouble of late." A short pause and the footsteps continued back around his head.

"I was there on Carida, the day your father protested the expansion of Imperial protection in the Galaxy." He had reached the left side of the table now. He paused and turned smartly on his heel to look down at the prisoner, looking for a reaction. "I watched him shot down with so many others." The man on the table stared back into those cold blue eyes, marveling at how lifeless they seemed now that they were closer. Any distraction. Undeterred, the man in the cloak turned and continued his progress toward the other end of the table.

"It's fitting, is it not?" Around past the feet and up the right side again. "To be captured in the place where he died?" Blue eyes latched onto his face again, but the words fell on deaf ears. The lack of response only made the man smile. It was a slimy thing. It slithered from his face as quickly as it came.

"You, Cassian, are nothing like what I expected," said the man in the cloak, "nothing like what Benduday said."

For a heartbeat, the man on the table lost his focus, stared at the man in the cloak. He felt his studied composure slip ever so slightly as reality slammed back into his head. Sensation returned to him with disconcerting clarity and he inhaled sharply against the probe.

The game was up. He was Cassian again, Cassian Andor, and that man was Krennic.

Upon seeing the look on his prisoner's face, Krennic emitted a small gasp, lifting a hand delicately to his mouth. That blackened soul was out to play.

"Oh," he whispered, a picture of regretfulness. "Oh, didn't you know?" Cassian could almost smell the putridity.

A switch suddenly flipped and hunger flashed in his eyes. He lunged forward and twisted the probe, pressing it deeper into vulnerable flesh. Cassian squeezed his eyes shut and stifled his scream behind closed lips and clenched teeth. Krennic sneered with vicious mirth. That cerulean sky burned as it hovered in close. Their faces were inches apart.

"Your little _bitch_ was still alive after that explosion."

The scream died in Cassian's throat, replaced by something much worse. He stared wide-eyed at the sweaty face that swam in front of his own.

"Oh, yes," Krennic spat through bared teeth. " _I_ found her that day, half-dead and bleeding. I know all about your life on Muunilinst." The probe twisted again, deeper, but Cassian felt nothing. _Muunilinst?_ She must have lied. Or Krennic was just filling in holes where his sources couldn't. "We've had many a chat, she and I." The way he said 'chat' turned Cassian's stomach.

"And now?" Krennic's head shook slowly from side to side. "You wouldn't recognize her if she stood in front of you." Cassian's vision blurred again, he didn't know whether from tears or sweat.

Another switch flipped. Some mockery of sentiment rippled across those primmed features. The commander made a tsk-ing sound as he ran his other hand over Cassian's soggy head.

"Why so surprised?" he cooed. "Thought you lost her?" A shaking hand ran down a clammy cheek. "Didn't you even bother to _look_ for her?" Cassian bit his tongue until he tasted blood. Krennic straightened suddenly, hand still on the probe handle, and looked down his nose at the pale and shivering form on the table.

"Some big brother you are." Cassian felt the probe suddenly slide from between his ribs. The ease of its removal surprised him more than anything. He choked on the pain and blood that flooded his lung.

Krennic paced back to the wall. When he reached the shadows by the door, he turned and regarded Cassian through those cold blue eyes. His white cloak was stained red in the light from the keypad. Blackened and bloody.

"Where…" Cassian rasped. He could feel his life draining warm and sticky through his ribs, and reasoned it would hardly benefit Krennic to lie now. He just needed to know before he died.

"You don't know how close you are," said the man in the cloak, then whispered something else so tauntingly out of earshot. A moan broke from between Cassian's lips as Krennic disappeared. Then the room and the durasteel table disappeared as well, and he was trapped in the darkness of his own head.

Somewhere outside, an alarm went off. Cassian imagined the room might have gone red with emergency lights. A distant explosion created tiny ripples in the blood that still oozed from his side. A moment later, another larger explosion caused the extracted probe to rattle where it had been left on the durasteel table. Another moment and a blaster sounded from the door. The smell of singed metal reached his nose. He imagined a smoking hole in the keypad as the door slid open once more.

"Dear Queen of Quinella!" Another accent snapped Cassian out of delirium. He felt the restraints go and then someone grabbed him roughly by the shoulders.

"Cassian?" A light slap on the cheek and he opened his eyes. A familiar face slid slowly into focus. Ruescott Melshi.

"Sergeant," Cassian whispered back. Relief washed over those rugged, unshaven features and they broke into a brief smile.

"C'mon, kid," he pulled Cassian into a sitting position. "Let's get you out of here."

He tore off a piece of his shirt, pressed it to the bleeder, and then guided Cassian's hand to hold it in place.

"Hold that steady."

"I'm s'pposed to give t' orders," Cassian mumbled. He swung his legs limply to the floor.

"Not when you can't breathe to give them, Lieutenant." Melshi ducked his head under Cassian's left axilla. With an arm around his waist, the sergeant lifted him into a standing position and helped him to the door.

Cassian didn't remember much of the journey out, just a lot of shouting and smoke and blaster fire. Melshi's stumbled attempts at running made it nearly impossible for Cassian to breathe. Eventually, the sergeant picked him up, ignoring his moans of protest, and carried him the rest of the way to the shuttle where it waited.

"Get us out!" He shouted the order before he was even onboard. "Out! Now!"

Even as the hatch was still closing, the shuttle lifted off. Melshi laid Cassian carefully across the seats on one side of the hold, right hand still clamped to the blood-soaked rag on his side.

"Anyone left behind down there?"

"No, sir," came a voice from the cockpit. "All accounted for." _Left behind?_ Had Cassian been able to breathe, he would have jumped up and railed at them all. _Since when does the Alliance justify leaving men behind?_

"Good." A moment of tense silence filled the hold with the sounds of panting soldiers and thrusters at full blast. Then a soft tug in his stomach told him they had jumped to lightspeed. The soldiers seemed to collectively relax.

From the cockpit, he heard the pilot begin to speak into the comm. "This is Pathfinder. Mission successful. Target recovered."

He felt Melshi drop down on the seats next to him.

" _Dammit_ , Andor," the sergeant breathed, leaning over him. "What the _pfassk_ were you thinking?" Cassian's only response was to spit blood out onto the floor. He coughed, his breath coming up red and bubbly.

"Let me through!"

The medic appeared at his elbow and began unbuttoning the gray uniform. Cassian immediately slapped his hands away.

"What the—"

Cassian reached into the front pocket and produced a small black rectangle. He turned it over in his hands as the medic began to inspect his side. Shaking fingers found a tiny button.

" _—_ _ur little_ bitch _was still alive after that explosion_ ," said the little box. The sergeant frowned and leaned in closer.

"What is that?"

" _Oh yes_ ," the box said.

A smile touched Cassian's bloody lips.

"They didn't check the front pocket," he wheezed and met Melshi's bewildered expression. "They _never_ check the front pocket."

"You recorded your own torture?" After a moment, Melshi dropped his head and shook it with a smile. "You've been chewing the luna-weed, Lieutenant."

" _Why so surprised?_ " cooed the box. " _Thought you lost her?_ "

Melshi's smile began to fade. "Who's he talking about?" he asked.

" _Didn't you even bother to_ look _for her?_ "

"Cassian?"

"No one."

" _Some big brother you are_." Cassian heard himself began to choke. That was when Krennic removed the probe.

" _Brother_?" said Melshi. "That's not no one—"

"He was just trying to get to me, alright?" Cassian glared at him. "She's gone. She's _been_ gone."

" _Who_?" asked the sergeant again.

" _You don't know how close you are_ ," said the tiny black box.

Cassian knew what came next. He brought it up close to his ear so he could hear what it whispered.

" _She just left the room_."

Cassian felt his mind go horribly still. He saw the girl, the one with blaster-canon eyes. The one who stood in the shadows and watched. He had seen her, but he hadn't recognized her. One look at her face and he knew she had seen the war up close. It was _written_ there, carved into the very skin.

Scars like dried streambeds.

Like a final twist of the probe, the truth stabbed into him and he felt himself break.

 _You wouldn't recognize her if she stood in front of you._

And he hadn't. And that was perhaps the worst torture of all.

 _I found her that day_...

Krennic had been telling the truth.

... _still alive after that explosion…_

The explosions.

He whipped his head to the soldiers in the hold. They were already looking at him. "Which one of you set off those bombs back there?" He was met with wide-eyed stares. " _Which one_?!" His lungs began to burn, but he couldn't stop his quickening breath.

"Bombs?" Meshi shook his head, frowning. "We didn't set those off. We thought that was your work."

Cassian wasn't listening anymore. _A distraction. She set a distraction so I could get out._ They would have her in chains by now. An act of terror against the Empire was grounds for execution.

"Turn the ship around." Melshi looked at him incredulously, as if he really had gone mad.

"What?"

"Turn it around!" he yelled again, sending another wave of fire through his lungs.

"Cassian, you need medical attention immediately—"

"We have to go back!"

"No," said Melshi firmly.

Cassian stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending, then jerked himself up off the seats.

"They'll kill her!" he screamed, clawing at the hands that shot out to restrain him.

"Kill _who_?"

"They're going to _kill_ her!"

"We have to sedate him," he heard the medic say somewhere far away. "He's going to make it worse if he keeps struggling!"

A weight suddenly pressed into Cassian's chest, pinning him to the seats and forcing all the air out of his chest. Melshi's face swam above his own. He was saying something, but Cassian couldn't hear through the pounding in his ears, through the wailing in his head. It came from a girl, a high little bell-voice. She was screaming his name over and over. He took hold of the sergeant's arms, but they wouldn't give. He drew a strangled breath into his body. Then, he felt a pinch in the side of his neck and turned to see the medic withdrawing with an empty syringe in his hand.

Melshi continued to hold him until his vision clouded over. Plunged back into that darkness.

The last thing Cassian remembered was hearing his own sobs, mingled with the blood and the tears and the sweat. The crying in his head had fallen silent.

* * *

 ** _Just a quick check: Cassian lost Ben when she was eight and he was eleven. This here is NINE YEARS LATER. She is seventeen now, and he is twenty. If you asked me, he dodged a bullet missing out on the years in between._**

 ** _This was originally not in my story at all. I only intended to mention Cassian's brush with Krennic and leave it at that. Then when it came to writing this chapter, I just started typing out a mini-scene between Cassian and Krennic to get an idea of where our rebel captain is after all these years. Then it just became part of the plot._**

 ** _Please review!_**

 ** _PS: Did you catch my Diego Luna reference? "Chewing the luna-weed" is actually saying from the Star Wars universe. So…there you go._**


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